The UN General Assembly has been told "the joyous news" from Belfast that historic all-party talks have been successfully brokered. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Burke, in his address to the Assembly, spoke of his hopes now for "leaving behind us the bitterness of history" and ensuring that the talks deal effectively with "the root causes of the threat to peace".
In his address, the Minister also raised the threat to Ireland from the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant and said, without mentioning it by name, that it should be closed down. This is the first time the risk from Sellafield has been raised by Ireland at the UN.
In the section on Northern Ireland, Mr Burke referred repeatedly to the "totality of relationships" between Ireland and Britain, a phrase which was first used by former Taoiseach Mr Charles Haughey in the early 1980s.
What was notable about the present developments was that "they were undertaken in partnership between the Irish and British governments". The sense of change in both islands would be a very important factor in the negotiations and would "impart an urgency and focus to the deliberations. More importantly, it means that those who form part of that talks process have the opportunity to shape their future rather than surrender through indifference or apathy to the inexorability of change", the Minister said.
On nuclear safety, Mr Burke said that "we in Ireland live in close proximity to a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant which poses a considerable threat to us because of the ever-present risk of a major accident at the plant". Reactor safety and "the closure of substandard reactors represent for my Government fundamental necessities that nuclear energy states must meet.
"It is simply unacceptable that poor management of radioactive waste and spent fuel should threaten the health and safety of populations or cause serious longterm damage to the environment of states which have no nuclear programmes."
The outspoken nature of Mr Burke's denunciation of Sellafield has led to speculation that the British delegation may look for a "right of reply" at a later stage at the General Assembly.
Mr Burke welcomed the proposals for UN reform put forward by the Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, whom he met earlier to discuss Ireland and the UN.
The Minister asked the other UN members to support Ireland's candidacy for membership of the Security Council in 2000. Ireland was last a temporary member of this body in 1982.
On human rights, the Minister said it was "a cause of great pride" to the Government and people of Ireland that the Secretary General had chosen Mrs Mary Robinson as the new High Commissioner. He said that the human rights situations in certain countries were of "particular concern" to the international community. These countries included Myanmar, East Timor, Nigeria and Afghanistan. On UN peacekeeping, Mr Burke said that the Irish support "has not wavered" even if we had paid a heavy price of some 75 Irish peacekeepers' lives.