Madam, - Vincent Browne (Opinion, May 27th) is right to warn about the implications for Irish neutrality in the debate about the Lisbon Treaty ratification stemming from the US role in the so-called war on terror, in particular in Somalia. But a pity that he does not extend his warning to the State's role in Chad with its participation in EUFOR.
In his keynote speech about Sudan at the general meeting of the Royal African Society at the School for Oriental and African Studies in London on May 21st, the internationally respected Sudan specialist Alex de Waal warned that Irish participation in EUFOR was undermining Irish neutrality because "EUFOR is not a neutral force".
The reality is that EUFOR, the EU protection force in Chad and the Central African Republic to the south on the border with Sudan, has been set up through French manipulation as another armed shield to prop up the regime of Chadian president Idriss Deby Ito and as such it has become in effect a party in the conflict in Chad and Darfur.
President Deby's allies in the Darfur rebel Islamist Justice and Equality Movement (Jem), consisting mainly of Deby's Zaghawa kinsmen, came to his rescue when Chadian rebels threatened to run him out of the Chadian capital N'Djamena in February and took their revenge with their march on Khartoum resulting in the latest battle of Omdurman earlier in May.
This raises two questions . Where does Jem, as a proxy of President Deby, propped up and armed by France and the US, get its weapons and resources? And why should other EU nations, including neutral Ireland, be involved in offering President Deby a military shield under the guise of humanitarian protection? - Yours, e tc,
PIETER TESCH,
Chief Executive, Sudan Cultural Society of Britain and Ireland,
Croydon,
England.