TAOISEACH BRIAN Cowen has said the exploration of deeper ties between the EU and Nato raises no issues for Ireland’s policy of military neutrality.
At the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party meeting in Galway, Mr Cowen dismissed the suggestion that steps towards a closer EU-Nato relationship would pose problems for the Government.
Mr Cowen attends a European summit in Brussels on Thursday at which EU leaders will ask the union’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, to explore ways of strengthening links between the union and the military alliance.
Draft summit conclusions, reported yesterday in The Irish Times, indicate that Baroness Ashton will be asked to develop ideas on how EU/Nato co-operation in crisis management can be advanced.
Sources said animosity between EU member Cyprus and Nato member Turkey is a key obstacle to deeper EU-Nato co-operation. The objective, they said, was to develop ways of strengthening existing systems under which the two have worked in partnership together in places such as the Balkans and Afghanistan.
The summit conclusions were signed off last week by EU diplomats, a routine practice in advance of European summits. The summit itself is unlikely to see a detailed discussion on stronger EU-Nato links, sources said.
“The conclusions that you are referring to refer to crisis-management operations,” Mr Cowen told reporters.
“As you know we have already been involved in Nato-led crisis management operations as a result of co-operation that exists between the EU and Nato in Kosovo, in Bosnia, in Afghanistan.
“So it is important to point out that relationships between these organisations have to be considered but there’s no one questioning our particular position in relation to our domestic policy.”
Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin adopted a similar stance, saying he saw no threat to Irish neutrality. “And we have a range of opt-outs and legal guarantees that copper-fasten our position, so I don’t see any danger in this,” he said.
“Of course there is a significant overlap in terms of the membership of the EU and Nato, so you are going to consistently get articulation of that point and in the context of the US-EU transatlantic relationship it’s also a factor that there would be co-ordination and co-operation,” Mr Martin said.
The Peace Neutrality Alliance group said the request to Baroness Ashton flowed from a “neoliberal militarist ideology” in the EU.
“For the supporters of this ideology what better way to solve mass unemployment than to send a large percentage of the unemployed off to war? The Fianna Fáil party has been the strongest advocate of this ideology.”