The most sensitive St Patrick's Day celebrations this weekend are likely to be in the Middle East, where all the main protagonists in the recent row over cuts in the Defence Forces come together for the bash. The Minister for Defence, Michael Smith, and the head of his department, Dave O'Callaghan, travelled with the Chief of Staff, Lt Gen Dave Stapleton, to south Lebanon to visit the Irish UN Battalion there and will be in Damascus on a similar mission today. There is little love between the three after the month-long spat over the White Paper recommendations - as well as the leaks and spinning - as various factions tried to put a gloss on their position. There is also a great deal of bad feeling in the military about the cuts and the attempt by the Department to downgrade the whole function and role of the Defence Forces.
Although everything is now patched officially up the greatest worry with nerves so frazzled is that there will be a repeat of the highly embarrassing incidents which broke out during St Patrick's Day celebrations in Cyprus and Lebanon a few years ago. In 1996, the then Minister for Defence, Sean Barrett, was rounded on by a garda on UN peacekeeping duty during the party after the St Patrick's dinner in Nicosia; in 1997 an army officer was involved in a dispute during a party, at which the same minister was present, in Camp Shamrock in Lebanon which led to his court martial the following year.