A leading member of Fine Gael has broken ranks with the party by proposing a suspension of the Government decision to join Partnership for Peace.
Ms Mary Banotti, MEP called on the Government to suspend its decision on joining the NATO-led PfP for 12 months "until the people of Ireland have had a chance to fully explore the issues involved in our membership".
At a Fine Gael convention last night, at which she and Mr Jim Mitchell, TD were elected to run in the Dublin constituency for the European elections, Ms Banotti said people are "profoundly disturbed by the Balkan war". Ms Banotti, who ran in the last presidential election, said: "They [the people] are questioning whether Ireland should be part of any NATO-led alliance. People must have time to review the issues, to understand fully what Partnership for Peace involves."
The role and actions of NATO in the Balkans have cast a shadow over Ireland's proposed membership of Partnership for Peace, she said. The electorate should use the European elections to demand a peaceful alternative to military force in the Balkans.
"Bombing will neither end the problem nor improve the situation. It serves only to put off to another day, even another generation, the task of finding the diplomatic way forward." Calling on the electorate to insist that "the EU withdraws its unconditional support from the NATO bombing", she said that although President Milosevic "must be held responsible . . . the international community has been inconsistent in the messages it sends to the Milosevics of this world.
The public should insist that NATO suspend the bombing, she continued. Furthermore, the electorate should insist on a commitment to finding a UN-led diplomatic solution.
In the context of the Balkans crisis, Ms Banotti called on all Irish MEPs to petition the Government "immediately to take an independent foreign policy stance from the NATO-dominated stance . . . and to use its moral authority to influence EU policy.
"Addressing this conflict is not a party political matter, but one of our collective belief in the diplomatic process resolution which underpins the very nature of the European Union and Irish democracy."
