Famed peacemaker’s pride in Omagh victims’ resilience

THE American Senator who famously brokered the Good Friday Agreement has spoken of his pride in naming his daughter after an Omagh bomb survivor.

Senator George Mitchell, chairman of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement talks, posed in Boston with the Ulster Herald’s special commemoration of the bomb survivors on the 25th anniversary of the Market Street atrocity. An aspiring pianist, Claire Bowes (nee Gallagher) was 15-years-old when she lost her sight in the attack. She continued her music education at Queen’s University Belfast and went on to open the Omagh Music Academy on Campsie Road.

The former Maine Senator has spoken of his continued connection to Tyrone’s county town and his ongoing pride in the resilience of those affected by the bomb.

He told US television of his hopes for new-born daughter and how she might emulate her Omagh namesake.

“We became good friends and Claire Gallagher is now in her thirties, married with two lovely children,” Mitchell said.

“If my daughter can come close to having the courage and the fortitude that Claire Gallagher has, she’ll have a great life.”

The now 90-year-old former Senator was speaking at a special conference to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement at the Senator Edward Kennedy Institute in the Massachusetts capital.

Delegates included Stormont Assembly members Mike Nesbitt (UUP), David Brooks (DUP) and Andrew Muir (Alliance) alongside MPs Colum Eastwood of the SDLP and John Finucane of Sinn Fein.

The former judge and US Senate Majority Leader recalled the advice he gave to Northern Ireland’s politicians as he edged them towards an historic agreement in 1998.

“On the very first day of the negotiations I said to the delegates that I did not come with an American peace plan. I said there’s no Clinton plan, there’s no Mitchell plan, there’s no American plan.

“If there is ever to be an agreement it must be your agreement. And it was.”

Speaking to a distinguished Irish-American audience including his successor as White House Envoy to Northern Ireland, Joe Kennedy III, Senator Mitchell encouraged the North’s politicians to again reach for compromise amid the ongoing stalemate over the Brexit Protocol and Windsor Framework.

“It is now up to the current leaders to act with the same courage and vision as did their predecessors 25 years ago,” he said.

“The current leaders can, and they must, do whatever is necessary to preserve peace to return self-government, to ensure for those they represent, freedom and hope and opportunity.”