State must not join any Nato group, says FF

FIANNA Fail will continue to resist efforts to edge Ireland closer to full participation in military alliances such as Nato or the Western European Union (WEU), the party's foreign affairs spokesman, Mr Ray Burke TD, has said.

He said Irish people are not prepared to accept commitments that could mean "being suddenly and automatically at war".

Mr Burke was speaking yesterday at a conference hosted by the Irish Council of the European Movement.

It was a matter of national regret, Mr Burke said, that a serious debate here on the future of security in Europe had been prejudiced by the delay in publication of the Government's White Paper on foreign policy. The paper the first of its type in the State's history is to be published next Tuesday.

A debate is scheduled in the Oireachtas for Thursday only two days later and the EU Inter Governmental Conference (IGC) opens at the end of next week in Turin.

Media leaks had indicated the Government was seriously considering joining the "Nato linked" Partnership for Peace (PFP), Mr Burke said.

A PFP association would be "vehemently opposed" by Fianna Fail as amounting to "second class membership" of Nato.

The PFP was formed by Nato in May 1994 as a link with central and Eastern European states. It includes among its membership the neutral states of Finland, Sweden and Austria, who joined without giving a commitment to Nato membership.

Fianna Fail believes in military neutrality, and there is undoubtedly a strong attachment to this, and to disarmament and nuclear non proliferation, among the Irish people, Mr Burke said. Ireland held an "honourable tradition" on the world stage, and had far more moral influence than it gave itself credit for.

Ireland was in favour of "collective peace keeping" through organisations such as the UN and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

Acknowledging that many of the old Cold War arguments no longer existed, Mr Burke said military neutrality was an important signal for a small country. It demonstrated it was not motivated in its international activities by any selfish, strategic or economic interest of its own, or of the EU.

However, the party believed the Defence Forces should be at the disposal of the EU for crisis management on a case by case basis, under the auspices of the EU Common Foreign and Security Policy, he said.

It was important to assess all the alternatives involved in a common defence policy in a "calm and objective" manner, the Minister of State with responsibility for European affairs, Mr Gay Mitchell, told the conference. A key issue would be the relationship with the WEU.

Ireland currently holds WEU observer status, and full membership would involve acceding to Article V of the WEU treaty, under which states undertake to provide all the military and other aid in their power if one of the members was the object of an armed attack.

However, Ireland could not turn its back on the unprecedented opportunity created by the ending of the Cold War to create a Europe that was "pros free and at peace", he said.

If the moral obligation of being involved in a security policy is going to be tested, it is likely to be in the economic, rather than the military field, Prof Patrick Keating, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of European Affairs, told the conference. It was worth reminding ourselves that were the UN Charter to be fully developed, we would see quite clearly that the obligations of UN membership over rode neutrality, he said.

The continued use in public political debate of traditional, largely Cold War terminology, set the limits on governments, including this one, on the debate about collective self defence. A long term preventative approach was the essence of the EU's "civilian power", he said.

Mr Paul Gillespie, Foreign Editor of The Irish Times, told the conference Ireland's neutrality was nothing to be ashamed of. He said we had much to contribute, but were only now beginning to think about a security policy, defined hitherto by our links with the UN, in the European context.

Mr Alan Dukes, chairman of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs and international vice president of the European Movement, and Mr James Downey of the Irish Independent, also participated.