The Dail, by approving participation by Irish troops in a military police operation in Bosnia, has given a welcome extension to this State's involvement in European security affairs. The troops will be deployed in Sarajevo as part of the coordinating group in charge of military police duties among the Stabilisation Force, which operates under NATO command as mandated by the United Nations Security Council. A novel feature of the deployment, necessitated by the need for close liaison, will be the presence of an Irish officer at NATO headquarters in Mons, Belgium.
The Irish contingent is among the smallest in this remarkable international force. It has managed to achieve most of its military mandate - some 18 months before its mandate is due to be renewed.
Certainly, a renewal of the mandate will be needed, given the patchy record in progressing the political side of the Dayton agreements. Despite its size, however, the Irish contingent has an important role to play in SFOR. It is essential that good relations among the multinational force are maintained and that the force as a whole keeps up its positive engagement with the population of Sarajevo. Ireland with its strong reputation in international civilian and military policing has an important role to play.
This is the first time a contingent of Irish troops has been involved in European security tasks under NATO command since the end of the Cold War. There has been considerable reluctance to become involved for both political and operational reasons. Existing and longstanding Irish commitments to UNIFIL in Lebanon have stretched the availability of large numbers of troops elsewhere.
There has also been a political caution about becoming involved with NATO, arising from hostility in the ranks of Fianna Fail, Labour and Democratic Left. This has been projected in the main against NATO's Partnership for Peace (PfP) initiative, but, it has also surfaced in the discussion about participating in any peacekeeping force under NATO command. One of the most welcome aspects of yesterday's decision is that it has overcome this objection, and that there has been little or no objection to it from the main parties represented in the Oireachtas.
SFOR and its predecessor IFOR have indeed operated very effectively, precisely because they were able to draw on NATO expertise in bringing an uneasy peace to a war weary former Yugoslavia. They were specifically mandated to do so by the Security Council. Nonparticipation would have jeopardised Ireland's honourable tradition of peacekeeping. Equally, it makes little sense to refuse to participate in the PIP whose main business has been to involve aligned and nonaligned states in new peacekeeping tasks. The suggestion that this would be a halfway house to NATO membership makes sense only if there is a political will to do so, which is clearly not present in this State.