PORTLAND – The result of the chaotic race for the White House isn’t expected to affect the work of a committee examining the crisis in Israel and the Palestinian territories, according to former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, the panel’s chairman.

President Clinton named the Maine Democrat last week to head a five-person panel that the White House said will provide an independent review of the recent crisis.

Mitchell said in a news conference Monday that the committee must act soon if it is to be effective.

A date for the panel’s first meeting has not yet been set, but Mitchell said he expects it to take place soon, probably in New York or Washington. A trip to the Middle East would follow soon after, he said.

“Whoever is going to be president is going to take office January 20. We expect to be well under way by then,” Mitchell said. “And although we have not and may not ever set a firm deadline, we all recognize that if we are to be of service we will have to work promptly and thoroughly.”

Mitchell, who was Clinton’s mediator for Northern Ireland, will be joined by another former senator, Warren Rudman, a New Hampshire Republican, former Turkish President Suleyman Demirel, Foreign Minister Thorbjorn Jagland of Norway and Javier Solana, a Spanish diplomat who is the senior security official of the European Union.

Mitchell said he expects to face more differences between the situation in the Middle East and Northern Ireland than similarities. But he said that he did learn in Northern Ireland that stopping the violence needs to be the first step.

Regarding the presidential election, he said he favored “as full and fair a count as possible.”