A meeting between Minister for Defence Willie O'Dea and US Joint Chief of Staff Richard Myers will not take place, a spokeswoman for the minister said this afternoon.
This morning a spokesman for the Department said General Myers would discuss areas of "mutual interest" with Mr O'Dea in the Department's offices on Infirmary Road.
However, this afternoon the spokeswoman said an official meeting was "never on the cards" and that General Myers would have paid a courtesy call on Mr O'Dea, had the minister been in Dublin. He will not be in Dublin today, it has emerged.
General Myers is inspecting Irish troops and will hold discussions with his Irish counterpart Chief of Staff General Jim Sreenan.
Anti-war protesters organised rallies to coincide with the visit and vowed they would still go ahead. Richard Boyd-Barrett of the Irish Anti-War Movement said: "We still want to protest. We don't want senior members of the Irish military to meet him [Gen Myers] either given the US is involved in mass-murder in Iraq, and there are no other words for it."
Mr O'Dea's spokeswoman said Gen Myers visit was an official military visit. "If the Minister was in Dublin Gen Myers would have made a courtesy call", she said. But, she added, he had appointments in Longford and Mullingar and would not be returning to the capital today.
Independent TD Finian McGrath said earlier the proposed meeting was "wholly unacceptable", a day after it emerged that nearly 25,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the US-led occupation began in 2003.
"Over 4,000 of these civilians were innocent children who were butchered and slaughtered," said Mr McGrath.