TÁNAISTE AND Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade Eamon Gilmore hopes his presence at the United Nations General Assembly and in US media interviews this week will improve Ireland’s image, and hence its economic prospects.
“I see my mission as essentially about the restoration of Ireland’s reputation,” Gilmore said in an interview in the offices of the Irish delegation to the UN.
“Ireland suffered huge reputational damage in the last number of years.”
One obvious way for Ireland to shine was “by reviving and recovering our economy, by communicating to the wider world that we are serious about that”.
The Tánaiste said Ireland was “light years ahead of where we were six months ago”. When he came to office, foreign media reports “made for embarrassing reading. They are entirely different now.”
It was important for Ireland “to build on a number of strengths in our international relations . . .
“As Robert Emmet said, ‘taking our place among the nations of the Earth’,” Gilmore continued.
Ireland is particularly adept at development aid, hence the importance of the UN high-level meeting on nutrition yesterday.
The Tánaiste told the meeting, which was also attended by Minister of State Jan O’Sullivan, that “12 million people, nearly three times the population of Ireland, are severely hungry in the Horn of Africa”.
When Ireland co-launched the Scaling Up Nutrition initiative with the US a year ago, “we committed to lead by influence and example”, Gilmore said.
The ministerial meeting on the Horn of Africa on Saturday would be another key moment for Ireland.He said he wanted the international community to pay greater attention to the famine in Somalia.
“The Irish people have put their hands in their pockets in these bad times, difficult times. The Irish Government has stepped up to the plate. Hunger is an area where Ireland has a very strong resonance.”
Ireland pursued these objectives because “it’s the right thing to do”, but the positive impression enhanced economic prospects. “Some people approach international affairs by having big armies and waving the stick,” Gilmore said.
Ireland, though, with its emphasis on preventative diplomacy, mediation and the experience of conflict resolution in Northern Ireland, “has a big, big contribution to make in European affairs and in world affairs”.
In his address to the General Assembly on September 26th, the Tánaiste said he would make “a comprehensive statement of Ireland’s approach to the big issues in the world today – how we deal with conflict, the Arab Spring, world hunger, poverty, climate change”.
The statehood resolution that Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas will present to the UN Security Council on Friday is overshadowing all other matters this week. “It’s important that we don’t become obsessed with what happens in the halls of the UN building.
“We have to be very cognisant of what is actually happening on the ground and that is extremely worrying: the expansion of [Israeli] settlements, the blockade of Gaza, the necessity of ensuring that moderate Palestinian leadership succeeds.”
Gilmore observed an informal agreement among European foreign ministers not to commit to a position before seeing the Palestinian resolution. If, as expected, the US vetoes the text in the Security Council and a weaker version moves to the General Assembly, “I would expect that the position that Ireland will take will be consistent with longstanding policy that we want to see a state of Palestine established”, he said.
US and Israeli officials, who are manoeuvring feverishly to prevent the resolution coming to a vote, accuse the Palestinians of acting “unilaterally” by bringing the matter to the UN.
“I perfectly understand – given the fact that the talks process has halted – why the Palestinians have come to the United Nations and I think it is the right route for the Palestinians to take,” Gilmore said. “I don’t subscribe to the view that this is somehow a unilateral action.
“I think it is highly appropriate that the Palestinians take their case to the UN. That’s what the UN is here for.”
On this issue, Ireland and its US and Israeli friends appear to have agreed to disagree. US ambassador Dan Rooney visited Gilmore at the Department of Foreign Affairs and hardline Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman phoned him.
“I wasn’t in any way surprised by the views they conveyed to me,” he said. “Nor indeed were they surprised at the general approach that Ireland has taken on this issue for a very long time, which has been well known to them.”
Asked whether he thought the Deputy First Minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly, Martin McGuinness, could be a suitable president for Ireland, Gilmore saw the question in part through the prism of foreign affairs.
“The president has a role to play in representing Ireland to the wider world,” he said. “[Labour candidate] Michael D Higgins would do the country proud.”
Gilmore emphasised that he did not want the presidential election “to become a contest between parties”. He would not “comment negatively about any other candidate” but he stressed that “the office of president is different . . . we are electing an individual to be the guarantor of the Constitution”.
It was also important that the president “underpin an inclusive society in Ireland”, a task fulfilled particularly well by Mary McAleese and Mary Robinson, he added.