The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mrs Mary Robinson, has urged the Government to commit troops to any EU peacekeeping force in Afghanistan.
Mrs Robinson said it is essential Ireland plays its part in bringing about stability.
Last night the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, said Ireland will support but not necessarily join such a mission.
The Government was among several which last night disputed claims that the EU had created its first multinational force to police Afghanistan.
Mr Ahern said everybody had "agreed in principle to support a mission", this did not mean Ireland would actually participate.
However today the EU looked set to declare its 60,000-troop rapid reaction force operational despite the failure of diplomatic efforts to secure crucial access to NATO planning resources. The Union is henceforth capable of carrying out crisis management operations, the 15-nation bloc planned to say in a final summit declaration to be issued later in the day.
The development of means and capacities that the Union has at its disposal will allow it progressively to take on ever more complex operations. But the proclamation rang hollow after Greece refused to accept a deal under which its Aegean arch-rival, NATO ally Turkey, would have agreed to put the Western defence alliance's operational planning at the EU's disposal.
Without guaranteed NATO assistance, the EU might have to move towards costly development of a parallel planning apparatus for peacekeeping and other missions in and around Europe.
With defence budgets across the Union stagnant or in decline, the chances of that look slim.
Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency, conceded before the summit that failure to set a relationship with NATO in stone would make a declaration of operationality largely rhetorical.
"If no access to NATO's resources can be secured, it must declare itself operational without such a declaration being based on any true capability," he told the European Parliament.
