THE Labour Party conference adjourned consideration of a motion opposing Irish participation in the NATO sponsored Partnership for Peace programme, after Mr Spring repeated his view that Ireland should be open to involvement.
Participation in Partnership for Peace, in which NATO and non NATO members carry out joint military training for peacekeeping and humanitarian missions, would not detract from Irish neutrality, Mr Spring said.
The conference adopted a motion which "accepts the responsibility to participate in an appropriate manner in regional and pan European initiatives designed to facilitate such operations to deal with crises such as that in the former Yugoslavia and to train and prepare Irish forces for such activity".
Proposing the motion opposing PIP membership and seeking a pro neutrality amendment to the Constitution, Mr Roger Cole (Dun Laoghaire) said: "The destruction of our neutrality and the integration of the State into a federal Europe where Irish people could be conscripted to fight a war in the Middle East over oil is seen as a remote possibility."
But it was not remote, he said. France, Germany, Italy and other EU member states were now advocating a merger of "the nuclear armed Western European Union" with the EU.
Ireland should oppose these developments and advocate neutrality not just as an Irish value but a European value, he said.
Mr Michael McLoughlin (Dublin North Central) said he was sceptical of much of these arguments. "I'm fed up with looking backwards to the Cold War," he said. "There are no warring superpowers, the Cold War was buried with the pieces of the Berlin Wall" and with the people who died in Bosnia, he said.