The United Nations should work to ensure that "diplomacy will regain the primary ground, insofar as that is possible" in the Iraq crisis, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mrs Mary Robinson, has said.
Mrs Robinson was in Trinity College Dublin yesterday to be formally installed as Chancellor of the University of Dublin.
She said the UN had "gone the extra mile to resolve this in a peaceful way" and praised the UN Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, for displaying "great leadership".
She said she was "very concerned, very troubled, particularly about the children and older people, about the sufferings of the vulnerable people" in the present conflict.
Mrs Robinson also expressed concern about food shortages. "It is well known that it is in the hands of Saddam Hussein that his people would be fed and that medical care would get through to them."
She said this was "a time for reflection about the importance of reinforcing the UN as an international representative forum for our world."
In her address following the installation ceremony, Mrs Robinson said there was a recognition that Ireland's economic future would be built on information technology.
However, there was "far less recognition that its political future would be determined by the degree to which the information revolution and internationalisation can support both economic and social policy objectives and ethical values."
She asked whether it was enough to teach law without justice, philosophy without ethical considerations, or logic without truth.
She continued: "If we are not to be overwhelmed by change, we will need, above all, the support of certain lasting values which the university, more than any other institution in society, is committed to uphold and promote: the free interplay of argument and discussion; a critical approach to the orthodoxy of the times; a passion for truth; and freedom to express the ideas which emerge from the restless questioning surge of the human intellect."