Calls to remember 'US ties' in the war debate

GALWAY: Galway West's Progressive Democrat TD, Mr Noel Grealish, has called for a proper recognition of the "ties that bind" the US and Ireland in the country's position on Iraq.

The newly-elected TD, who succeeded Mr Bobby Molloy in Galway West, has urged people to "open their minds" and ask whether or not there is "some merit" in the case being put forward by the US government against Iraq. He has also criticised those who will be attending the anti-war protest in Dublin on Saturday as "anti-American, anti-enterprise and anti-investment".

Mr Grealish made his comments less than 24 hours after several hundred people attended a Galway Alliance Against War meeting in his constituency, which was addressed by the former UN Assistant Secretary-General, Mr Denis Halliday, and the Galway West Labour TD and party foreign affairs spokesman, Mr Michael D. Higgins.

At the public meeting, Mr Halliday criticised what he described as Ireland's "collaboration" with the illegal threat of war against Iraq.

Mr Grealish said yesterday that he wasn't aware of the public meeting, nor was he necessarily calling for support of the US position. Any position that Ireland took on Iraq should be under the auspices of the United Nations, he stressed.

However, he said he feared that US companies based in Galway, like Boston Scientific, Hewlett Packard, Medtronic and Thermoking, might "up sticks" and go if there was a substantial anti-US mood in Ireland.

These companies had helped turn Galway into the "most creative, most dynamic and the most lively city in Ireland", he said. Irish people should remember the close ties they shared with the US, and the US role in the Northern peace process. "When Russia invaded Chechyna, no one took to the streets here. Yet when the US takes a position, this anti-Americanism comes out," he said.

The Galway Alliance Against War, the Green Party and the Labour Party have organised transport from Galway to Dublin for Saturday's march, and a grouping calling itself "Pixies for Peace" is holding a Valentine's Day "love" march through Galway in protest at the war threat tomorrow.

Mr Halliday urged support for the demonstration when he addressed the public meeting in the Menlo Park Hotel, Galway, on Monday night.

Mr Halliday - who resigned from his position as the UN's humanitarian co-ordinator in Iraq in September 1998, in protest over the impact of UN-imposed sanctions on the Iraqi people - said Irish people should use their ties with the US to sway public opinion against war, as it was only public opinion that would stop President Bush in his tracks.

Ireland's "great reputation" for peacekeeping was now being seriously undermined by this Government's stance on the issue, he said.

Referring to the Shannon Airport debate, and concerns about US investment in Ireland, Mr Halliday said he could not believe that Irish people would want to have economic prosperity "riding on the backs of the Iraqi people".

Mr Higgins, said it was as important to campaign for an ending of the sanctions against Iraq as it was to campaign against war.