Remarks by a senior US official on the security relationship between the EU and NATO have provoked controversy over the implications of Irish participation in the European Rapid Reaction Force. Mr Michael D. Higgins of the Labour Party last night accused the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, of evasiveness and failing to seek a public debate on the issue.
Speaking in Brussels on the eve of a two-day meeting of NATO defence ministers, the US Defence Secretary, Mr William Cohen, said there should be "a single planning operation", without any duplication, between NATO and the Rapid Reaction Force.
"If, as I have said before, they try to set up a separate operational planning capability - separate and distinct from that of NATO itself - then that is going to weaken the ties between the United States and NATO, and NATO and the EU." He added: "We have to have complete transparency and there should be a single planning operation and not duplicative and redundant - because that will only weaken NATO itself."
Reacting to the Defence Secretary's comments, Mr Higgins, the Labour spokesman on foreign affairs, said: "This emphasises the outrageous absence of democracy at the level of the Government in general and the Minister for Foreign Affairs in particular, in not seeking a public debate on all the implications that surrounded the recent commitment conference relating to the Rapid Reaction Force.
"The Minister is being evasive in relation to both the structure and control of the new force to which Ireland has committed 850 troops without any consideration as to the implications for our respected UN peacekeeping role.
"The US Defence Secretary's comments illustrate the multiplicity of views as to the structure and control of the new force. Mr Cowen sees it as an extension of the Petersberg Tasks on European security but the US secretary sees it as a threat unless it is fully incorporated into NATO, and the British government sees it as tolerable if it is controlled by a British general who happens to be the second-in-command of NATO." ail before this weekend's Nice summit: "There should have been a full debate on the nature of European security."
Asked for a comment on the US Defence Secretary's remarks, the Department of Foreign Affairs pointed out that the EU summit in Feira, Portugal, last June had agreed a set of principles for consultation with NATO on military issues. Such consultations would take place "in full respect of the autonomy of EU decision-making" and be conducted in accordance with "shared values, equality and in a spirit of partnership". They would reflect the fact that the EU and NATO were "organisations of a different nature" and that "each organisation will be dealing with the other on an equal footing".
However, Mr Roger Cole of the Peace and Neutrality Alliance said the US intervention "confirms PANA's view that by joining the European Rapid Reaction Force the Irish Government were destroying Irish neutrality, as the new force is to be merely an extension of NATO. The fact that Turkey, which isn't even in the EU, is providing military forces will only consolidate NATO's control over the RRF."
The Defence Secretary, who was attending his last NATO ministers' meeting before the new US administration takes over on January 20th, stressed that separate planning for the EU force without a strong role for leadership and expertise from NATO would cause problems: "That is something I think an overwhelming majority do not want to see take place. They want to see the ESDP [European Security and Defence Policy] strengthen NATO itself."
Patrick Smyth adds from Brussels:
Asked about British concerns that proposed treaty provisions might allow some memberstates to co-operate in laying the basis for a standing European army, Mr Cowen said in Brussels that no such outcome had been envisaged in the ESDP established through the Amsterdam Treaty, and Ireland would certainly not support any IGC provisions which allowed that.