Dail Report: EU Government's will have a "difficult and awesome challenge" to agree a common position on Iraq once the UN chief weapons inspectors issue their report, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen told the Dáil.
Such a common approach might not be possible at the emergency EU summit next Monday he said, warning that "the UN also faces up to the reality that the use of force may sometimes be necessary". Nobody should doubt their "grim" resolve should such force be required, he said.
He personally believed a further UN resolution would be required for any attack on Iraq. Urging a united front from the UN Security Council, he said the reality was that resolution 1441 "cannot be a mandate for endless excuses and prevarications".
During a muted 2½-hour debate on the Iraqi crisis the Minister said he was not in a position to answer Opposition demands about the Government's response in the event of the Security Council failing to agree a new resolution.
The Minister told Fine Gael's Foreign Affairs spokesman, Mr Gay Mitchell, there would be a Dáil debate, and they would then decide, based on "what the facts are" at that point.
Labour's Foreign Affairs spokesman, Mr Michael D. Higgins, condemned the Minister for failing to make any reference to the humanitarian crisis, and Government backbencher Ms Liz O'Donnell (PD, Dublin South) agreed with the Labour deputy there had not been enough concentration on the humanitarian issue.
Mr Higgins said the Government was "ignominiously" silent on some fundamental questions. Any war would be one "waged upon the Iraqi people", he said. "The total and absolute silence of the Government fudges the fact that there is no coherent evidence linking a strike on Iraq with the US war on terror." The Minister rejected Mr Mitchell's claim of Government "doublespeak" and said the Government operated on the principle that international order required the Iraqi regime to comply with UN resolutions.
Mr Cowen said the council had to decide what precisely Iraq had to do to meet its demands, how long it had to do it and how the council would discharge its responsibility if Iraq did not comply.
The "compelling political reality is that a second resolution would signal the unity and resolve of the international community and the clear legitimacy of any subsequent military action".
He said the Government had spoken out and "used our influence at every opportunity, in every forum and in all our meetings and contacts to urge the need for a peaceful solution".
It was the Government's "strong view that the inspections should continue as long as the inspectors themselves and the Security Council consider that they serve a useful purpose. At the same time we recognise that the inspections cannot continue for ever".
It was time for "clear leadership", Mr Mitchell said, and warned that "credibility does not come from merely following the lead of the body's strongest member, the US". He demanded that the Government should get prior Dáil approval for Irish refuelling or overflight facilities if the UN authorises multilateral action.
His party colleague Mr John Bruton (FG, Meath) believed a war against Iraq in the next month would "be out of all proportion with the actual threat posed by Iraq. The risks arising from such a war, are far greater than the risks that would arise from postponing it for another six months or so, to see what can be achieved otherwise".
Ms O'Donnell said the "effective multilateral action won't work if the powers won't let it work". Such issues were much more important than the "sideshow of the use of facilities by US soldiers at Shannon". Decisions "over the next few days and weeks will determine survival or extermination of many thousands of innocent civilians. The humanitarian outcome of an attack on Iraq must be honestly faced by those charged to make these critical decisions."
