We will not sell cheaply symbols of sovereignty

Last week, in a major diplomatic incident, Canada withdrew its ambassador from Israel. It took this serious step to signal its outrage at the misuse of Canadian passports by Israeli agents who had attempted to carry out an assassination in Jordan.

Though not a country noted for its nationalist fervour, Canada felt that its international standing, its place of honour in the community of nations, was undermined by the abuse of its passports. That these symbols of its citizenship had been dragged into the dirty wars of the Middle East made the insult all the worse.

In May 1986 a US government delegation led by the former national security adviser, Robert McFarlane, arrived at Tehran airport to begin the negotiation of an infamous arms-for-hostages deal with the Iranian government. The visit was part of the bizarre, illegal and scandalous saga that later became known as the "Iran-Contra affair", in which officials of the Reagan administration conspired to circumvent a congressional ban on funding for counter-revolutionary terrorists in Nicaragua.

When the delegation landed in Iran it handed over to the local "security services" a pallet loaded with spare parts for US Hawk missiles, and some presents: pistols, a chocolate cake from Tel Aviv, and Irish passports.

By August 1990, when Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz and his associates decided to take advantage of the Irish passports-for-investment scheme, the facts of this strange visit to Tehran had already emerged in US congressional hearings.

The government knew, at the very least, that Irish passports had been outrageously abused in the Middle East. It knew that the international symbol of our sovereignty had been dragged into a dirty deal which involved, among other things, the arming of the Iranian regime for a barbaric war, the arming of the Contras for another barbaric war, and the subversion of the US constitution.

We don't know whether it knew anything more than this. Were the Irish passports forged or genuine? How did the Americans get them? What did the Iranians do with them? Maybe Charles Haughey's government asked these questions, and maybe it didn't. But at the very least it knew that there were huge questions to be answered about the way our passports could be deployed.

And, as it happened, that knowledge was directly relevant to the application of Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz and his associates for Irish passports. The sheikh owns the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia, a private bank that is used by the ruling royal family for many of its deals. As such, he was directly involved in the arms-for-hostages affair.

The first consignments of TOW missiles were sent in 1985 to the Iranians through the Israeli government (with the direct approval of the Reagan administration), and funded by the Saudis through the National Commercial Bank. Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz was up to his neck in these murky deals.

Much of this may now be forgotten by most people, and it reads in retrospect like a bad thriller. But in 1990 it was very much in the news. Col Oliver North had been tried in 1989, and a 700-page congressional report had been issued. In March 1990 Admiral John M. Poindexter was put on trial for his part in the affair.

North's personal notebooks were released. Information on the McFarlane visit to Tehran with Irish passports in his pocket, and the role of the sheikh's bank in the same affair, were in the public domain.

In any country which genuinely valued its sovereignty and international reputation, the abuse of Irish passports in the Iran-Contra plot would have been a very big issue. Moreover, in a country whose foreign policy was based on neutrality, that abuse should have set all sorts of alarm bells ringing.

However, not only did we not do what the Canadians did last week and assert our independence by a public protest, but we did something that beggars belief. Here was a situation in which the very integrity of the Irish passport - one of the basic services which the State provides for its citizens - had been put at risk. Here, too, was a man who had been part of the very set of actions which had inflicted this damage applying not for one, but for 11 of these very documents.

There were, of course, other reasons to be concerned about Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz, principally his heavy involvement with BCCI, the bank at the centre of one of the largest frauds in history. But the Iranian arms connection was even more pertinent. It related directly to Ireland's vital interests as a respected member of the international community.

Even the most minimalist approach to his application would suggest that it be treated with extreme caution. In the circumstances of 1990, with the Iran-Contra affair all over the newspapers, it ought to have been more difficult for someone involved in it to get an Irish passport than for a Saudi Arabian billionaire to pass through the eye of a needle.

Instead, breathtakingly, the sheikh and his friends were given the red-carpet treatment. The rules were flouted. The application was rushed through. The minister for justice himself signed the naturalisation papers. The passports were issued the day before those papers were signed.

And they were then presented to the sheikh by Charles Haughey, the Taoiseach himself, over lunch at the Shelbourne Hotel or possibly, if Vincent Browne's information is correct, at Mr Haughey's home in Kinsealy.

All of this is as fishy as Killybegs. Ray Burke's involvement in the affair may indeed be relatively peripheral, but that does not mean that the events themselves are unimportant.

At best they suggest that a government whose leader never tired of lecturing us about patriotism took a shamefully supine attitude to the corruption of one of the essential symbols of citizenship and sovereignty. At worst, they raise all sorts of questions about why Charles Haughey took such a personal interest in the matter, and about Irish connections to a very murky set of deals in the Middle East.

Either way, the whole business ought to be investigated by the Moriarty tribunal as part of its inquiry into Mr Haughey's use of political power for personal enrichment. And yet, astonishingly, the Government thinks there's nothing to it.

The Minister for the Environment, Noel Dempsey, tells us it's all "a bottle of smoke". Is it any wonder that the Government's judgment in the Burke affair has been so disastrously askew?

If the prostitution of the Irish passport matters so little, then I hope we will hear no more about patriotism. If the compromising of Irish foreign policy matters so little, then I hope we will hear no more about neutrality. Let's come out and tell the truth, that we value the symbols of our sovereignty so highly that we wouldn't dream of selling them for a less than a few million quid.