Partnership for Peace was a framework geared to the need for greater co-operation in peacekeeping, the Minister for Foreign Affairs said, opening a series of statements on PfP and Kosovo.
"Far from marking a radical departure in our foreign policy, participation in Partnership for Peace would be in tune with our basic and enduring approaches to international affairs," Mr Andrews added.
"Participation in PfP would reinforce our ability to support the United Nations and the OSCE in implementing peacekeeping questions. Participation would be in full accordance with our policy of military neutrality."
Fine Gael's foreign affairs spokesman, Mr Gay Mitchell, said the PfP was a co-operative structure in which participants picked the areas in which they chose to co-operate. "For this reason, ultra-neutral Switzerland, which is not even a member of the UN because of the obligations it imposes on members, is able to join PfP."
He criticised a recent editorial in The Irish Times for taking the "soft option" of suggesting a referendum asking whether the Republic should join the PfP to carry out certain named tasks.
By just asking in the referendum whether people wanted to join PfP the State could negotiate "virtually anything under the guise of the PfP". By listing certain tasks "we might find that the issues on which we initially sought to co-operate need to be varied, increased, decreased or that they do not suit and we will be unable to participate without a further referendum".
Calling for a referendum on PfP, Mr Michael Ferris (Lab, Tipperary South) said that attitudes were changing and positions were being re-examined. "In this rapidly changing world it is simply not sustainable to repeat a meaningless mantra about the `sacredness of Irish neutrality' as if Ireland were still in the midst of the second World War or still trapped deep in the dark days of the Cold War."
Mr John Gormley (Greens, Dublin South East) said that PfP was not "some innocuous organisation" or what NATO's spokesman described as "an educational forum". It was much more than that.
The US ambassador to NATO had said than an enhanced PfP was furthering the goal of military inter-operability and "making the difference between being a partner and being an ally razor-thin". The difference between being a member of NATO and PfP was thus almost non-existent, he added.
Mr Joe Higgins (Socialist, Dublin West) said the Government's explanatory guide to the PfP was "a disgraceful document". It was "utterly dishonest and attempts to convey the impression that joining PfP is like joining the Boy Scouts or the Girl Guides".
