President Barack Obama’s mideast peace envoy George Mitchell is an unlikely optimist.

Ten months into an assignment that has confounded generations of U.S. diplomats, Mitchell said on Wednesday he remained upbeat about bringing Israel and the Palestinians back to peace talks — thanks in part to his experience resolving another once-intractable crisis, the dispute between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland.

Mitchell, credited with shaping the 1998 Good Friday Accord that ended that long and bloody conflict, said the key was not to lose heart.

“Over a period of five years, I chaired three separate sets of discussions.  The main negotiation lasted for nearly two years.  For most of that time, there was little or no progress, and our effort was branded a failure,” Mitchell told a news briefing.

“But then, after two years of saying no, both sides said yes. In a real sense, we had 700 days of failure and one day of success.”

Mitchell, a former Senate majority leader, has thus far had little success in shuttle diplomacy aimed at resuming stalled Mideast peace talks, which have seen the two sides still bitterly divided over the issue of Israeli settlement construction on Palestinian lands.

Mitchell said there was no alternative but to push forward.

“If you’re serious about peace, you can’t take as final the first no, the second no or even the hundredth no.  You can’t get discouraged by setbacks and you can’t be deterred by criticism.  You have to be patient, persevering and determined,” he said.

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Photo Credit:Reuters/Fadi Arouri (Mitchell during a meeting in the West Bank city of Ramallah in September)

Nobel peace laureate Martti Ahtisaari is a former Finnish president but, after looking at President Barack Obama’s speech in Turkey, he said: “I nearly felt it’s good to be an American.”

Speaking after lunch at the National Press Club in Washington, the 71-year-old winner of the 2008 prize was asked on Tuesday to assess the U.S. leader’s call for peace and dialogue with Islam.

“I must say that I’m proud as a transatlanticist and democrat to see that sort of speech is made,” he told reporters.

Ahtisaari, the president of Finland from 1994 to 2000, won the Nobel Peace Prize last year for helping to bring peace to places as far-flung as Kosovo, Namibia and Indonesia’s Aceh province.

Interviewed by Arshad Mohammed of Reuters on Monday, he said Hamas must be allowed into talks on ending the conflict with Israel and it was both dangerous and pointless to exclude the Palestinian militant group.

He said Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, and Fatah, which holds sway in the West Bank, “have to get their act together and form a united front” to end their power struggle.

Ahtisaari said it would be foolish to rule out peace talks under new Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, recalling it was Richard Nixon who as U.S. president in 1972 broke with a U.S. policy of isolating China by visiting Beijing.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Bjorn Sigurdson/Pool (Ahtisaari poses with certificate and medal after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo in December)

On a dark and drippy Washington morning, President-elect Barack Obama meets with his economic advisers to discuss the 2010 budget.

At the White House, President George W. Bush will create the biggest protected marine area on the planet, a trio of national monuments in the Pacific.

The new U.S. Congress convenes today, with clouds hanging over two Democrats: Roland Burris of Illinois and Al Franken of Minnesota.

Burris arrived in the Washington area Monday, vowing to take Obama’s vacant Senate seat. But because he was appointed by Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, Senate Democrats have said they plan to keep Burris out, at least for now — though a compromise is possible. Blagojevich has been charged with having earlier tried to sell Obama’s seat.

Franken, a former stand-up comic and comedy writer, was declared the winner in a Senate contest against Republican Norm Coleman after a recount showed Franken with a 225-vote majority. Coleman has promised a court challenge of those results.

Morning TV news shows also focus on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and lousy weather in Washington and across the eastern half of the United States: rain, sleet and ice expected from Texas to New England. Washington being Washington — with the world’s worst reputation for weather wimpiness — some area schools are closed or opening late in anticipation.

Outside the Beltway, morning chat includes Oprah’s plans to reverse her 40-pound weight gain, further talk about the death of John Travolta’s son Jett in the Bahamas, and Patrick Swayze’s cancer struggle, complete with film clips of his starring role in the 1987 flick “Dirty Dancing.”

REUTERS/David Loh (Undersea scene in South China Sea)
REUTERS/Eric Miller (Minnesota Senate candidate Al Franken)

WASHINGTON - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama may have taken care of his Hamas problem on Wednesday with a speech to the AIPAC pro-Israel lobby.
 
The Illinois senator was ridiculed, criticized and generally harassed back in April when a top Hamas adviser, Ahmed Yousef, told a radio interviewer that the Palestinian militant group — considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. government — liked Obama and hoped he would win the U.S. presidential election.

Yousef’s remarks were labeled a Hamas endorsement and Republican John McCain used them as part of a fundraising appeal to supporters. Obama’s denunciations of Hamas and criticism of McCain over the incident did little to undo the damage.
 
That may have changed Wednesday, when Obama went before American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington a day after clinching the Democratic nomination and declared his strong support for Israel.
 
Israel’s security is sacrosanct and it must retain a qualitative military advantage, Obama said. Any peace deal must include Palestinian recognition that Jerusalem would remain Israel’s undivided capital, he said.
 
Hamas promply unendorsed Obama, a Christian who has had difficulty dispelling a rumor campaign suggesting he is a Muslim and that his advisers have a pro-Arab bent.
 
“Obama’s comments have confirmed that there will be no change in the U.S. administration’s foreign policy on the Arab-Israeli conflict,” Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters in Gaza.
 
“The Democratic and Republican parties support totally the Israeli occupation at the expense of the interests and rights of Arabs and Palestinians,” he said.
 
“Hamas does not differentiate between the two presidential candidates, Obama and McCain, because their policies regarding the Arab-Israel conflict are the same and are hostile to us, therefore we do have no preference and are not wishing for either of them to win,” Zuhri said.

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 Photo credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque (Obama speaks at AIPAC conference)