Sinn Féin has said Ireland should refuse to co-operate with anyone involved in military action which does not have United Nations authorisation, calling for an amendment to the Constitution to enshrine the concept of military neutrality.
At the publication of a party policy document, "Positive Neutrality in Action", yesterday, the Sinn Féin president, Mr Gerry Adams, said neutrality "has never been more relevant than at this time of great volatility in international relations". He wanted Ireland to maintain neutrality while strengthening its involvement in global affairs.
He told a press conference that neutrality did not stop with non-membership of military alliances. It meant refusing to facilitate international conflict, working for international co-operation and respect for human rights, and working for international demilitarisation and nuclear disarmament.
Ireland should continue to participate in international peacekeeping operations under the auspices of the UN, he said.
According to the document, the Government should "refuse to allow the island to be used as a military base for refuelling warplanes or civilian flights carrying troops to the theatre".
Mr Adams said the "so-called Caring Coalition" of Fine Gael, Labour and the Greens offered no alternative. "Fine Gael is to abandon neutrality in favour of an EU Common Defence. While Labour, the Green Party and others supported Sinn Féin's constitutional neutrality bill last year, Labour also supports building an EU Common Defence." The party's Dublin European Election candidate, Ms Mary Lou McDonald, said there was "no legitimate role for the European Union in military and defence matters, which should be left to individual states". She said that in little more than a decade the EU had set up the EU Security and Defence Policy, the Rapid Reaction Force, EU military command and control structures, a military harmonisation deadline of 2010, an agreement to create an EU armaments agency, an EU Security Doctrine that dictated increased defence spending and approval for enhanced military co-operation between the EU's big three states of Britain, France and Germany.
"It is clear that the EU treaties taken together aim to reconstruct the EU as a military and economic superpower. The draft EU Constitution accelerates this process further, particularly with the introduction of the solidarity clause at Article 40," she said.
The party's international affairs spokesman, Mr Aengus Ó Snodaigh, said Sinn Féin had been the first party in the Dáil to propose a motion calling for the Government to withdraw overflight and landing privileges to aircraft carrying foreign troops on their way to the war in Iraq. He said they were also the first party to propose a fresh motion calling on the Government to stop allowing Shannon to be used by US troops as a refuelling base.
He said Sinn Féin proposed to "close the loophole" in existing legislation that allows for foreign war complicity by executive decision, and instead require Dáil approval of permission for any non-emergency or non-UN mission-related use of facilities in the state by foreign militaries.