The war in Iraq will not delay the production of a constitutional road-map to manage the expansion of the EU, the president of the Convention on the Future of Europe said in Dublin yesterday.
However, Mr Valery Giscard d'Estaing, a former president of France, said he was disappointed that EU members did not attempt to reach a consensus when the Iraq crisis emerged last summer.
With Britain engaged in a war opposed by France and Germany, Mr Giscard d'Estaing said the European members of the UN Security Council would have been in a position to influence the debate on Iraq if they had engaged in the process earlier.
"It a fact that Europe is divided," he said. "It's normal to have disagreement, you have this then in a democratic system all the time, but we should have a European priority."
That priority should be "to address the European partners to verify if it is possible or not to have a common stance - and this should have been done at the beginning of the Iraqi process".
Mr Giscard d'Estaing believed the convention would reflect a desire among Europeans for a unified policy. It could not be enforced "in the coming days and weeks" but it created a network of institutions that would be ready when the political will existed. "It's not the final stage of the common foreign policy but the stage before: how to prepare, how to review and how to try to reach agreement for a common position."
Mr Giscard d'Estaing was meeting with the Government to discuss its stance in the debate on a common foreign policy and on the development of the European institutions.
He had asked the Taoiseach whether he was on the US or "European" side on the Iraqi war and he had been told that "European union is a very important priority" for the Government.
Mr Ahern said the Government would not accept any change in the provisions governing taxation systems where policy was decided at national level. He said Ireland would not accept a withdrawal of its veto in this area, where EU unanimity would be required to enforce a common policy. He said the Convention's draft treaty should protect the principle of equality among member-states. The Government's position was that the balance between member-states and the institutions should be "maintained and emphasised".
Mr Ahern said Ireland had a "different perspective" to other member-states in the area of justice and home affairs although he believed the EU worked towards co-operation in relation to immigration, asylum, terrorism and drug-trafficking.
EU leaders will hold an emergency summit on June 30th to discuss a draft constitution to be produced by the Convention on the Future of Europe. The decision to discuss the draft in June means the convention will not be given the extra time Mr Valery Giscard d'Estaing believes it may need to agree on a text.
Members of the convention yesterday voiced sharp disagreements over the first draft articles of the treaty, with some conservatives demanding that God or the Judaeo-Christian tradition should be mentioned. German MEP Mr Elmar Brok suggested that religion could be mentioned in the constitution's preamble rather than in the main text. The British representative, Mr Peter Hain, said many Europeans did not believe in God and that they deserved as much respect as believers.
Some members complained about the use of the word "federal" in the draft constitution's first article and many rejected a passage promising to respect the "national identity" of member-states.
