Government's neutrality pledges worthless, says anti-military body

Government assurances that Ireland would engage only in UN-mandated military operations if the Nice Treaty was ratified were "worth precisely nothing," the anti-militarisation group AFrI has said.

Publishing a booklet yesterday on the military implications of the treaty, AFrI's chairman, Mr Andy Storey, asked whether people could trust a Government which had reneged on previous pledges on security, including a commitment to hold a referendum on membership of the NATO-led Partnership for Peace.

He said the use of Shannon Airport by US military aircraft en route to Afghanistan and Iraq "indicates there is no military intervention the Irish Government would not agree to".

He stressed, however, that "even the best intentioned and most trusted Irish government would have difficulty promoting a peaceful agenda" under the treaty, which, he claimed, would increase the militarisation of the EU.

Mr Storey remarked that Nice "is probably not the most important" EU treaty on military affairs "but it is an important treaty", in particular by establishing the political architecture for the control of the European Rapid Reaction Force (ERRF). This force would act as a "partner with NATO" rather than a counterweight to it, he said.

He stressed that the Seville Declaration on neutrality, which the Government attached to the treaty after the last referendum, was "a statement of intent that has no binding legal status". The Government's so-called "triple-lock" neutrality guard, whereby it would supposedly agree to operations only if they were UN-mandated and had been approved by the Government and the Dáil in turn, was "very flimsy", given the Government's track record and the fact that it had a Dáil majority.

AFrI co-ordinator Mr Joe Murray added that the UN's peacekeeping operations were being directly abandoned by Ireland in favour of the ERRF as a result of the decision to commit 850 Irish peacekeeping soldiers to the latter.

The Afri booklet argues that a second treaty rejection would send "a valuable warning message to Irish and EU policy-makers".