Government may refuse visas

The Government is to consider refusing visas to the Yugoslav soccer team if UEFA continues to insist that next Saturday's scheduled match between Ireland and Yugoslavia goes ahead.

The Cabinet will consider whether it should withhold the visas at its meeting tomorrow amid growing political opposition to the staging of the game, according to Government sources. EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels today may consider the matter and the Minister for Sport Mr Jim McDaid has said he will raise the question of the match at a meeting of EU sports ministers tomorrow in Paderborn, Germany.

In April EU foreign ministers called on member states not to encourage sporting contacts with Yugoslavia because of the war in Kosovo. Any EU decision this week to toughen its stance on sporting links with Yugoslavia could prompt a decision to withhold visas. FAI officials are still hoping for late intervention by the Government to prevent the European championship game against Yugoslavia going ahead as scheduled at Lansdowne Road next Saturday.

During a hastily summoned press conference after the Republic of Ireland's 1-0 defeat by Northern Ireland on Saturday, chief executive Bernard O'Byrne said the Association had been placed in an impossible position by the indecision of UEFA on the one hand and the Government on the other.

"Ministers have indicated that they don't wish the game to go ahead in the present circumstances, but the Government has the power to withhold visas from the Yugoslavs," he said.

The Government last night called on UEFA to reconsider its decision to allow the match to go ahead in the light of the indictment of the Yugoslav President on war crimes charges.

A Government spokesman said last night the Government was "astounded by UEFA's contradictory stance in allowing the Yugoslav national team continue in this competition and yet have stopped Yugoslav club teams playing in another competition".

Government sources say they are unsure as to the level of influence the EU can bring to bear on UEFA, a independent sporting body which includes all European footballing federations - not just those from the EU - among its membership. Yugoslavia's expulsion from the European soccer finals in 1992 followed pressure from the United Nations on UEFA.

He said the Government was calling on UEFA to take note of the developments on the past week, particularly the indictment of Yugoslav President Mr Slobodan Milosevic or war crimes charges. He called on UEFA to review its decision to allow the game go ahead and repeated that no Government Minister would attend the match.

The FAI, who were originally in favour of the game taking place as scheduled, say they are disappointed by the moral vacuum created by UEFA's delay and the Government's reluctance to tackle the problem head-on.

This contrasts with the statements attributed to them by UEFA officials last month when the growing Kosovo crisis was already putting the fixture in some doubt.

Then, Guido Tognoni, head of UEFA International Teams Section, said that he had been assured by the FAI that they was nothing to prevent the game going ahead, and that the Irish Government would approve that decision.

Now the parameters have changed and with all parties sitting on the fence, the Association finds itself having to fulfill a fixture it doesn't want at this particular time.

They could still refuse to fulfil the fixture, but given the fact that any such decision would probably lead to expulsion from the championship and, possibly, exclusion from the next World Cup, that is not a realistic option.

Sceptics may say, harshly perhaps, that the newly manifested urgency at Merrion Square, owes less to morality than the void left by the absence of Roy Keane.

Keane, the most influential player in either team when the countries met in Belgrade last November, will be a huge loss and with Mick McCarthy also committed to replacing Steve Staunton and Ian Harte, a postponement of Saturday's game would not be inopportune.

Without the team captain's skills, the Republic frequently looked threadbare in going down to only their second defeat in nine meetings with Northern Ireland during the weekend.