The Labour Party leader, Mr Ruairi Quinn, has called for the establishment of an EU defence capability involving integration and co-ordination of the defence forces of member-states, including Ireland.
Mr Quinn's proposal, in an interview with The Irish Times, would almost certainly mean a redefinition of Ireland's traditional military neutrality. He said it would require a referendum to approve such a development.
"What I am talking about ultimately is a detachment or a section of the Irish armed forces forming part of a European defence unit which would be operational abroad within either the framework of the OSCE or the United Nations," he said.
Decisions on the operation and deployment of an EU defence unit would be almost certainly made at EU rather than national level. Mr Quinn envisaged that such a unit would not be confined to humanitarian and peacekeeping missions but would "within the framework of international law be able to operate in areas like Yugoslavia or beyond".
His proposal comes on the eve of the Labour Party conference, opening in Tralee tonight, which is expected to see intense debate on foreign policy. Mr Quinn says he has agreed this position in discussions with the party president, Mr Proinsias De Rossa, and the deputy leader, Mr Brendan Howlin, in recent weeks. These discussions were given impetus by the damaging public disagreements between Mr Quinn and Mr De Rossa over Kosovo.
His comments represent a substantial hardening of the position Mr Quinn outlined in a speech to the European Movement last month. Then he simply asked whether Ireland should participate fully in any new European security arrangements. He pointed then to difficulties for Ireland in an EU-based security approach, such as the resulting co-operation on security issues "with nuclear states like Britain and France". He also pointed to advantages.
Mr Quinn told The Irish Times this week that the Yugoslav crisis had thrown the issue of defence and security policy "into sharper and more stark relief". The "tentative steps" in relation to defence in the Common Foreign and Security Policy parts of the Amsterdam Treaty "have proven to be pretty ineffectual even before they come into play", he went on. The EU, through an inter-governmental conference, "has to move towards having some form of defence capability, some form of integration and co-ordination of all of its armed forces".
He said he would like to see NATO disbanded and replaced by a Northern hemisphere defence union which would, under the aegis of the UN, consist of three pillars - the North American pillar, a European Union pillar and the rest of Europe and Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States pillar.
"NATO is a victim of its own past. The Cold War it was formed to fight is now over," he said.