THE appointment of former senator George Mitchell as special envoy to the Middle East has raised the possibility that he will team up with Tony Blair in a peace initiative drawing on their experience of ending the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Blair’s role as Middle East representative of the quartet of the USA, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations had seemed to be on life support after Barack Obama was elected because of the former prime minister’s closeness to George W Bush.

However, Blair stayed in regular contact with Hillary Clinton, the new secretary of state, despite strains over the Iraq war. Mitchell's appointment came as a relief to him.

“To have somebody with real clout and an inside track to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is fantastic for Blair,” a close associate said. “He pulled it off in Northern Ireland with George Mitchell.”

Diplomatic sources said Obama wanted to keep Blair in the post although his role would inevitably be overshadowed by that of Mitchell, who chaired the negotiations leading to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement in Belfast.

Mitchell, 75, who is due in Israel on Wednesday, is expected to press for a freeze on settlements in the West Bank, but is likely to run into stiff resistance if the right-wing Likud party wins a general election on February 10.

He is regarded as an honest broker in the Middle East - as the son of an American janitor and a Christian Lebanese-American mother, he has a nuanced understanding.

When his appointment was announced last week, Mitchell noted wryly that negotiating peace in Northern Ireland involved 700 days of failure and one day of success. His cool, calm manner made the hot-headed local politicians look like “pygmies”, it was said at the time.

But some Middle East experts wonder whether he is now too “distinguished” for the post. “We’re expecting George Mitchell to wander around saying, in my day we did this and that,” said one.

He added that Richard Holbrooke, Obama’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, is much more inclined to “grab people by the throat”.

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