INTERNATIONAL law experts at a conference on East Timor, for which Dublin was expressly chosen because of Ireland's reputation on the issue, have heard Government policy described as "largely rhetorical".
The weekend may have marked the end of a honeymoon between the Department of Foreign Affairs and the East Timor Ireland Solidarity Campaign, one of the event's sponsors.
Ms Eilis Ward, lecturer in political science at TCD, said that because of resistance from within the EU, particularly Germany, the Tanaiste, Mr Spring, had not congratulated "on behalf of the Irish EU Presidency" the recent East Timorese Nobel Peace Prize winners, Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo, and Mr Jose Ramos Horta, the political leader in exile.
Opening the three day conference of the International Platform of Jurists on East Timor (IPJET) on Friday Ms Joan Burton, Mr Spring's Minister of State, congratulated the laureats.
Ms Burton had disappointed the Irish solidarity group by deferring a decision on a possible Irish presidency initiative until she heard the jurists' recommendation.
Yesterday they recommended that the Irish presidency put it to the Council of Ministers in Dublin next month "that the EU undertake arrangements to ensure the ongoing monitoring and reporting on the situation in East Timor with a view to achieving the ultimate goal of the self determination of the East Timorese people".
At the gathering a syndrome of "doing one thing in opposition and another when in government" was also criticised in the Swedish context by a former MP from that country, Mr Hans Goran Franck. He disapproved of a decision by his own governing Social Democrats to resume Bofars arms sales to Indonesia, the illegal occupying power in the former Portuguese colony for the past 21 years.
Senator David Norris, in a speech that brought hum our to otherwise heavy seriousness, declared: "The reason why Fianna Fail politicians are queuing up to speak at this conference is that they are in opposition. My advice to the solidarity campaign is - exploit the bastards."
Ms Ward said that the Taoiseach, Mr Bruton, and the Tanaiste had gone to some lengths before Ireland's EU Presidency to apparently prioritise the Timor issue. Yet Mr Spring had not once, that she could see, mentioned it in his opening presidency address to the European Parliament last July. She speculated on why the issue had been "taken off the boil".
An internal Departmental "freemasonry of diplomacy" and the "fraternity of free trade" was one possibility.
The conference was addressed by Ms Angie Zelter, one of four women acquitted in Britain this year after doing several million pounds worth of damage to a British Aerospace Hawk jet due for delivery to Indonesia.
A message of solidarity was sent by the former president of Portugal, Mr Mario Soares.