With just 12 days to go until the new millennium, it is appropriate to reflect on the paradoxes of the century's last decade. This has been a remarkable decade for both good and bad reasons.

Here in Ireland, we have all been part of a steady but sure march towards peace and a new political accommodation on this island. The 1990s have also seen an unprecedented improvement in our material well-being and an increase in our national and international confidence as a people. But the conflicts in the Balkans, little more than a couple of flying hours from Dublin, have given rise this decade to atrocities, human rights abuses, "ethnic cleansing" and brutality on a scale not seen in Europe since the second World War. In an echo of earlier and darker ages, the many thousands of victims for the most part have been innocent civilians.

In November 1995, Judge Riad of the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia described the tribunal's amassed evidence of massacres and other atrocities in Bosnia as "truly scenes from hell, written on the darkest pages of human history". Such a statement is a stark reminder to Europeans of the challenges we face to ensure lasting peace and stability on this continent.

We are encouraged by the fact that outmoded Cold War approaches to security and defence have been overtaken by general acceptance that strategies of conflict prevention, peacekeeping and crisis management are keys to ensuring stability and security in Europe.

These goals are reflected in the EU Treaty of Amsterdam, which foresees an EU role in the Petersburg tasks of humanitarian, rescue, peacekeeping and crisis management operations. There is an EU consensus that it should be better able to act at an early stage to prevent and resolve conflict, and prevent and manage the kinds of crises seen in the Balkans in this decade.

The Amsterdam Treaty's provisions offer a great deal of potential in that connection.

The challenge facing the European Union is thus to make a constructive reality of the treaty's provisions. The EU made a good start at the Cologne European Council in June, setting the objective of increasing the EU's capability to contribute to international peace and security in accordance with the UN Charter's principles.

The current Presidency of the EU, Finland, which, like Ireland, is not a member of any military alliance, submitted a progress report to the Helsinki Summit on December 10th-11th. It addresses how the EU can co-operate better to enhance the capabilities needed to undertake Petersburg tasks. Too often we have seen the tragic consequences of a failure to get peacekeepers into position quickly enough. We saw it in Bosnia in the early 1990s, and in East Timor just a few months ago, where an even greater catastrophe was only narrowly averted.

Compared to some of our EU partners, Ireland has a very strong and long-standing tradition of engagement in UN peacekeeping and crisis management operations. We have a good record in deploying quickly to peacekeeping operations, and we can share this experience through voluntary co-operation with our EU partners. The European Council in Helsinki has made it clear in its conclusions that this process "will avoid unnecessary duplication and does not imply the creation of a European army". Nor is Ireland on a slippery slope towards joining a nuclear based military alliance.

We recently saw a reminder of the continued existence of nuclear arsenals in the grave international concern for the war in Chechnya. Ireland will work for a world that is able, without prejudicing international security and stability, to get rid of the threat of nuclear weapons, which would cause appalling devastation and loss of life, if ever used.

In this post-Cold War era a policy of military neutrality has continuing relevance as long as the doctrine of nuclear deterrence, which is rooted in Cold War concepts, remains in force. We will work with other countries, whether aligned or non-aligned, in the UN to halt and reverse nuclear weapons proliferation.

The EU discussions are about improving capabilities to assemble and deploy for Petersburg tasks, in line with the Amsterdam Treaty, up to the size of a KFOR-type operation. In parallel with enhanced capabilities, quicker and more effective decision-making within the EU, using the best possible advice, is needed - as well as improved decision-making structures.

The United Nations is the primary international security organisation. The UN, however, is increasingly reliant on the support of regional organisations for regional peacekeeping. Ireland has already moved into the new UN approach to European regional peacekeeping through our participation in SFOR in Bosnia and KFOR in Kosovo, which are mandated by the UN Security Council.

We should approach the new security realities in Europe with confidence and a sense of national purpose. Our policy of military neutrality has always gone hand in hand with support for collective security based on international law.

This has been clearly demonstrated through our involvement in the League of Nations and the UN. It is also demonstrated by our involvement in the OSCE, and now in PfP and the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, whose meetings we have begun to attend.

European security has a vital Euro-Atlantic dimension. Ireland, politically, culturally and geographically is an Atlantic as well as a European country. It would have made no sense to adopt a policy, founded on anti-American prejudice, which would favour participation only in the development of a European Union common security and defence policy while excluding participation in PfP, simply because PfP involves the United States and is Euro-Atlantic in character.

Most of our EU partners, including the neutral States, would have strong reservations about trying to create exclusively European defence arrangements in substitution for North American involvement, but they do wish to provide for crisis situations where the US may choose not to become involved. Last Thursday Ireland attended our first meeting of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, which gives political orientations to PfP.

I fully support the EU's emphasis on the UN Security Council having the primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. Ireland will only take part in operations that have a UN mandate.

Mutual defence commitments, the so-called Article V issues covered by NATO and the WEU, are not relevant to the discussions underway in the European Union, and it is generally accepted in the EU that its priority areas are peacekeeping and crisis-management tasks. Participation is entirely voluntary and a sovereign decision in each case.

The EU discussions will continue after Helsinki. Ireland will continue to play a full part in them, in accordance with our policy of military neutrality. It is to be welcomed that the EU should be taking a more active role in this area in line with the Treaty of Amsterdam.

A new treaty may well be required to adapt the institutions of the Union for further enlargement. It remains to be determined whether amendment to the common foreign and security policy chapter of the Treaty of Amsterdam will be required. This Government made clear last year that if the issue of an EU common defence, involving a mutual defence commitment by Ireland, were to arise for decision in the future, it would be put to the people in a referendum.

Ireland, and the other EU states who are not members of military alliances, Austria, Finland and Sweden, have developed strong traditions in peacekeeping and crisis-management over the years. In keeping with our traditions and active role in ensuring that the European Union's Common Foreign and Security Policy becomes a more effective instrument for preventing and resolving conflicts, we will also play our full part in the new international circumstances we now face, showing a political solidarity within the Union that has always been an integral part of our European policy.