The fight against terrorism should not be characterised as a simple conflict between good and evil, the EU commissioner for external relations said yesterday.
Mr Chris Patten, who was in Dublin yesterday, also rejected the notion that the thrust of EU development was aimed at creating a militaristic, federal superstate.
"I don't believe that sovereignty is being pilfered in the dark by hooded European bureaucrats."
He said there was nothing in the new EU constitution which would change Ireland's traditional military policy, which allowed for participation in foreign missions to UN-mandated forces.
Addressing the Forum on Europe, Mr Patten said the problem of terrorism demanded a sophisticated and complex analysis.
He was against using the expression "war on terrorism" because it failed to account for the need to put long-term policies in place to prevent the conditions that encouraged terrorism.
There were often social forces behind terrorism which needed to be addressed just as much as the individual acts of terrorism themselves, he said.
"I do not believe that because you recognise the context in which terrorism occurs, it means that you should be accused of condoning terrorism.
"There is more of a relationship between development assistance and terrorism than people are prepared to accept."
Saying he did not accept the distinction between poverty eradication and fighting terrorism, he said tackling poverty "helps to drain the swamps that incubate terrorism".
Just as the prevalence of violence in the poorest parts of the world did not mean that poorer people were intrinsically violent, he said terrorism was prevalent in the same "failed states" which intertwined poverty with drug cultivation, insecurity and warlordism.