EU: The Irish presidency will be emphasising the need for what the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, described yesterday as an "effective multilateral order" in the world, when EU leaders meet US President George Bush in Dromoland, Co Clare, on Saturday. Conor O'Clery spoke to Mr Cowan in New York.
Ahead of his meeting with UN General Secretary Kofi Annan today, Mr Cowen said yesterday he believed the US was returning to the concept of international co-operation to deal with threats and he welcomed that.
Actions taken in Iraq since the invasion show the limits of unilateralism, said Mr Cowen, reflecting a common view at the UN that by overextending itself in Afghanistan and an increasingly violent Iraq, the US has limited its ability to take further pre-emptive military action.
The US president first announced the "Bush Doctrine" of reserving the right to take unilateral pre-emptive strike, where the US national interest was threatened, in 2002.
"They reserve that right," said Mr Cowen, "and the security doctrine remains official policy, but US Secretary of State Colin Powell emphasised the US wants to work with others when they see security threatened."
"What we need then is an effective multinational order, because it's clear we need to arrange international rules to apply to difficult or dangerous situations," he said. "There's no hierarchy of threat. There's always the threat of terrorism, or proliferation, of poverty, of AIDS, of environmental degradation."
In the aftermath of the recent security council resolution giving UN sanction to the Iraq political process, Mr Cowen said that Saturday's summit in Dromoland was "an opportunity to send a positive signal regarding how the EU and the US can work together if the transfer of sovereignty goes well, and to see how we can help with the reconstruction efforts."
This, however, depended very much on the security situation, and whether the interim Iraqi government could be seen to have power, be in charge of its own affairs and make decisions.
During the Irish presidency, the EU developed a more realistic strategy for a more realistic process, he said, "and that is one of the reasons we need the EU-US dialogue all the time."
Asked about the protests being organised against the visit of Mr Bush to Ireland, Mr Cowen said, "Let's be clear. This is a very important relationship. The majority of people recognise the importance of the meeting, recognise how important it is that we welcome the representative of the American people."
He was not saying that people shouldn't demonstrate. "People have a right to protest. All they ask for is that they be peaceful and lawful."
After the serious policy divisions over military action in Iraq, both within America and within Europe, "We have now come to the point where we have a consensus on the need to pick up our responsibilities as an international community on Iraq," he added. Mr Cowen said that under the six-month Irish presidency, which ends next week, EU co-operation with the UN on crisis management, which was started under the previous Italian presidency, had evolved from principals to practical application. They had done a lot of work on the planning side and evolved a concept of providing the UN, within 15 days, with 1,500 personnel to go into a threatening situation and stay for 120 days.
In his meeting with Mr Annan, Mr Cowen will review the EU's contribution to the Secretary-General's "High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change", which was co-ordinated by the Irish presidency, and will review the progress of the Irish mission to Liberia, where 430 Irish peacekeepers are engaged, among other issues.
The presidency document on how the EU can provide military support to the UN was endorsed by the European Council last week. It provides for two main options for EU support in UN crisis management, an EU rapid response operation and a "clearing-house" process to enable EU member-states to co-ordinate their contributions to UN action.
In Africa, it is envisaged that African peace-keeping forces would be deployed in UN operations with EU funds and expertise, a UN diplomat said. The UN panel was flagged by Mr Annan when he told the UN General Assembly last September that the challenges to the multilateral system had brought the UN to a "fork in the road".
Mr Cowen hailed the new EU constitution, which he said provided the first opportunity since the Treaty of Rome in 1957 "to come to the people with a single document to say, here's the basic law of the union, here's how it will operate."
It was the "updated basic text" for the post-Cold War period and "will allow us to re-engage the people" of the EU.
"It's not a question of this benign organisation spreading its largesse to poor neighbours, it's actually in our own self-interest to continue to extend the zone of security and prosperity, and to neighbours outside, in the same way as it worked in Ireland in the beginning, so that people can make a living in their own land."