Sir, - Mary Van Lieshout referred (June 14th) to the absence of public debate on foreign policy matters during the recent election campaign. Her argument that Ireland has an important role in moulding European policy is very relevant and such debate therefore becomes an inevitable moral and political responsibility.
Ireland is always tempted to follow the lead of the big powers where our own immediate interests are not at stake. Thus on Bosnia we uncritically endorsed the European establishment consensus favouring nonintervention and the arms embargo also "safe havens" which proved, as at Srebrenica, to be horrendously unsafe. Such policies led to mass genocide and the creation of 2 million refugees.
However, it is important to acknowledge and praise the work of individual politicians in the foreign policy area. For example, outstanding work has been done at the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs with virtually no public recognition. The result, as Mary Van Lieshout has indicated, confers an almost exclusively local and national perspective on the profession of politics.
Politicians of all parties have made significant and well informed contributions at this committee. There, and in other contexts, politicians such as Des O'Malley, former Senator Jan O'Sullivan from Limerick, Joan Burton, Ray Burke, Frances Fitzgerald, Senators Mary Henry and Pascal Mooney have set an example of personal commitment to articulate an appropriate Irish response to such crucial foreign policy issues as the Bosnian question and the subsequent war crimes tribunal. Yours, etc.,
Roxboro Road,
Limerick.