Fears about the security and defence implication of the Treaty of Nice have been rejected by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, who said any changes proposed in this respect were only for the purposes of greater coherence and effectiveness.
Speaking at the Military College in the Curragh, Co Kildare, Mr Cowen said the treaty, which will be the subject of a referendum, would involve "only limited changes to the existing provisions for the Common Foreign and Security Policy which are intended to make it more coherent, more effective and more visible".
These included the deletion of references to the intergovernmental security and defence fo rum known as the Western European Union and the provision of a treaty basis for the EU's new Political and Security Committee.
Mr Cowen said Ireland could play a constructive role in promoting peace and stability in Europe. "Contrary to the suggestion that has been made in some quarters, this is not an area where we would choose to opt out, ostrich-like, and isolate ourselves."
He said the European Council at Helsinki in December 1999 set the EU Headline Goal, a voluntary agreement to be able to deploy within 60 days and to sustain for at least one year military forces of up to 60,000 people capable of humanitarian, peacekeeping and crisis-management activities known as the Peterberg Tasks.
At the Capabilities Commitment Conference last November, EU member-states formally committed forces to the Headline Goal. In Ireland's case, the commitment of up to 850 members from the Defence Forces was authorised.
Irish troops would take part in a particular operation only if it had a UN mandate. "I would reiterate that this participation would require Government decision and Dail approval."
The EU was not a military organisation and did not seek to duplicate NATO. As participation in the UN-mandated operations such as SFor and KFor in the Balkans had shown, the EU would be likely to need access to NATO infrastructural capacity.
The UN had encouraged regional approaches to peacekeeping and there had recently been UN-EU discussions on peacekeeping and crisis management.
The Green MEP for Dublin, Ms Patricia McKenna, has challenged Mr Cowen to a "balanced debate" on the treaty. She accused him of "playing down the significance of the creation of an EU military structure". She questioned his assertion that Irish troops could only take part in European rapid reaction force operations which had a UN mandate. This was only a "political promise" without any basis in the text of the treaty, Ms McKenna said.