IN SPITE of a perception in Brussels that France's initiative to get a ceasefire in the Middle East is an empty gesture Ireland has welcomed the action.
European governments were struggling yesterday to find a common response to the bloodshed in Lebanon and Israel, after France began its apparently doomed attempt to broker a ceasefire single banded.
The Department of Foreign Affairs welcomed the French initiative, saying the visit to the region by the French Foreign Minister, Mr Herve de Charette, "could only be for the good." A spokes woman for the Department said that the Tanaiste, Mr Spring, who is at a conference in Bolivia, would be kept informed of developments. "Anything that the French can do to help improve the situation must be welcomed", she said.
But there was thinly disguised irritation in other EU capitals that Paris had ignored the machinery of common European foreign policy making in dispatching its Foreign Minister to Israel, Lebanon and Syria.
Senior foreign ministry officials from the 15 EU countries were meeting in Brussels yesterday to try to prepare some kind of common statement or initiative for a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg next week.
One diplomat said the unilateral French action would "go down like a lead balloon, not because of any jealousies but because the French move is hollow. There's nothing in it."
The French intervention received a similarly discouraging response in Israel itself.
The French newspaper, Liberation, said the initiative was prompted by embarrassment that Israel - a close ally of France - had launched the bombardment one week after President Jacques Chirac proclaimed his support for the sovereignty and independence of Lebanon, a former French protectorate.
Britain, meanwhile, issued, a statement expressing "concern at the "growing humanitarian problems" of the tens of thousands of civilians forced to flee the fighting. The Foreign Office statement called on both sides to "break the cycle of violence."
The cautious London statement contrasted, in tone if not in substance, with remarks by the British Defence Secretary, Mr Michael Portillo, who began a long scheduled visit to Israel yesterday. Mr Portillo placed the entire blame for the civilian exodus on Hizbullah.
"It is the right of every country to have security and defend herself", Mr Portillo said. "I don't believe that Israel wishes to kill any civilians and for that reason civilians have been withdrawing for their own security."
The US response to the fighting remains low key, with the Secretary of State, Mr Warren Christopher, telephoning his Syrian counterpart, Mr Farouq al Sharaa, the Israeli Foreign Minister, Mr Ehud Barak, and Lebanese leaders. But President Clinton, engaged in a round the world tour, has shown no sign of willingness to dispatch Mr Christopher or another senior official to the region.
The French initiative was seen as a snub to its EU partners and an empty gesture that could undermine the union's credibility, diplomats said yesterday in Brussels. President Chirac's move had sidelined the EU's troika system of dealing with foreign policy through representatives of the EU's immediate past, present and future presidencies - in this case Spain, Italy and Ireland. It also raises questions about France's avowed commitment to a European security and defence policy.
"Obviously the French have been frustrated by the ineffectiveness of the Italian (EU) presidency," one diplomat said.
The leader of Fianna Fail, Mr Bertie Ahern, called on the Tanaiste to issue a "a forthright and vigorous condemnation" of the Israeli operations. "The Israeli government is violating the territory of another sovereign state in a wholesale and indefensible way, both by continuing to occupy part of south Lebanon and by its indiscriminate offensive", he said.
Mr Spring should use his influence in the Troika to get the violence halted on all sides, he added.
While he condemned the Hizbullah, Hamas and other terrorist attacks on civilians inside Israel, the Israeli actions were equally wrong, he said. The Israeli government, he said, was engaged in state terror beyond its frontiers against the entire civilian population of south Lebanon in a wholly disproportionate way and was trying to create a human desert.