Minister for Defence Willie O'Dea did not meet the United States' top soldier, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen Richard Myers, yesterday, despite expectations.
Gen Myers, who laid a wreath at the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham, in honour of Ireland's military dead, was on a brief visit for meetings with his Irish counterpart, Lieut Gen Jim Sreenan.
The presence of the US general, who met his German counterparts in Berlin on Tuesday, provoked sensitivity in the Government, with officials emphasising the "low-key" nature of the visit. Mr O'Dea, according to a Department of Defence spokeswoman, had never been scheduled to meet Gen Myers formally at the Department of Defence HQ, in Parkgate Street.
"If the Minister was in Dublin, Gen Myers would have made a courtesy call," she said, but he had appointments in Longford and Mullingar and would not be returning to the capital.
The US general's visit was an official military visit to reciprocate a visit by Lieut Gen Sreenan to Washington in May, a Defence Forces spokesman told The Irish Times.
Four people, protesting about the US involvement in Iraq and its use of Shannon airport, held placards at the Royal Hospital during the wreath-laying ceremony.
The Irish Anti-War Movement yesterday said Gen Myers's visit was "an affront to Irish neutrality" and appealed to the Irish public to demand the immediate withdrawal of US and British troops from Iraq.
"This is all the more urgent given the latest shocking figures of civilian casualties in Iraq resulting from the US-led invasion and occupation," Richard Boyd Barrett said.
The attempts by the Government to throw a cloak of secrecy over the general's visit "shows that they know that the public are outraged by the Government's attitude to the US war machine".