Seanad Report: An Irish EU presidency committed to multilateralism could do Europe a great service, the President of the European Parliament, Mr Pat Cox, said.
Asking how we could discover effective multilateralism and lead from Ireland a debate in Europe about the renewal of the United Nations Charter, he said it was the charter that looked at wars between states, but we lived in an era where, for the most part, states were not necessarily the antagonists with which we might fear war.
"We must look again at this, and which state in Europe could be better placed than this one, with its history of commitment to the United Nations, to begin to develop and deliver this platform?" he asked.
Mr Cox said that in January next the European Parliament would have the privilege of a visit from the United Nations Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan.
"I will have the privilege of presenting our annual Sakharov award to recall those who fell in Baghdad. I have invited the Taoiseach and the Minister for Foreign Affairs to associate the Irish presidency with this, and I hope and believe we can take moments like that as Irish Europeans to bring our values of effective multilateralism on to a wider stage.
"Without labouring the point, we have a very special relationship historically and economically with the US. The Irish presidency can do Europe another service, that of making running repairs to a robust but stressed EU-US relationship."
Mr Cox said he would be officially announcing next week that the European Parliament had worked with national parliaments of the Euro 25 and with the parliaments of all the states in the Middle East and across the southern shores of the Mediterranean with the aim of agreeing to a European-Mediterranean parliamentary assembly.
"I would love if during the Irish presidency we would take up this challenge and be the first to produce such an assembly to establish that we offer solidarity and are connected to the concept of the wider Europe, its new neighbours, old neighbours and intractable and difficult problems.
"In that way we would not say to the Mediterranean states, Portugal, Spain, France, Italy and Greece, that is for them because it is their region, but rather that this is an issue for us, because we are committed Europeans," Mr Cox said.