MS Joan Burton has envisaged increased involvement for Ireland in the WEU. The Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs yesterday painted a positive picture of participation, in the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP).
She suggested the EU must strengthen its role in world affairs. The Government saw scope for "exploring further" the tasks of the Western European Union in regard to peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, she said. Ireland's present observer status at that body - the military arm of the EU was "proving useful."
Ms Burton was speaking in Dublin on the opening day of a two day conference, "Morality in International Politics", organised by the Irish School of Ecumenics.
Participation in the EU's common foreign and security policy greatly enhanced the contribution Ireland can make to international issues, she said. At the same time it did not diminish Ireland's particular stance on important matters.
She pointed to the recent accession to the EU of Austria, Finland and Sweden - three neutral states - as a positive development. Ireland shares with those countries "a willingness to give concrete expression to our principled approach to international issues".
The EU is about to begin a major review of the operation of the CFSP, first established in the Maastricht Treaty. The Union faced a very changed security landscape. "Many of our partners, and, many academics and commentators, have expressed the view that the CFSP must be strengthened, that the external action of the EU needs to be greatly enhanced."
This new "security landscape" brought new risks. "The threat of global nuclear destruction may have receded, but new risks of nuclear proliferation have appeared. We have seen war and ethnic cleansing in the heart of Europe, genocide in Rwanda and a number of open and bloody conflicts in parts of the former Soviet Union.
"The risks to the environment, the rise in international crime, the scourge of drugs, are all cited by governments throughout the world as issues that cannot be addressed by nations acting individually. Our security is indivisible is not a prescription: it is a description of reality," she said.
It was against this background that EU member states were about to review the CFSP. The forthcoming Inter Governmental Conference - effectively the EU's constitutional convention - presents an opportunity to consider what role the Union should play in the emerging "security architecture" of the world.
Ireland's membership of the EU had been a helpful extra dimension in projecting Irish views and focusing the concerns of the international community on the problems of the developing world, she said.
She described neutrality as a positive moral position . . . It has often been defined in negative terms it defines what we do not do rather than what we do. Neutrality is not indifference, it is not complacency, it is not the easy option. It is a positive policy - a policy which promotes and complements the basic aims of Irish foreign policy."
There was a strong feeling in Ireland that its stand on foreign policy issues should be a strong moral one. This was reflected in the many Irish non governmental organisations as well as the spontaneous demonstrations against, executions in Nigeria and alleged abuse of children in Chinese orphanages.
"Irish foreign policy has been and continues to be aimed at preventing conflicts, promoting development, economic growth and co operation, controlling the supply of arms and promoting disarmament."
Mr Ian Davis of the University of Bradford told the conference the EU has greatly increased its share of the international arms market in the last decade and has failed to use the "peace dividend" in Europe to reduce weapons production.
He said the value of global arms transfers had fallen from a peak of $74 billion in 1984 to $22 billion in 1993. During the same years the volume of EU arms exports fell from $14 billion to $7 billion.
Nevertheless, the EU increased its share of a declining market from 18 per cent in 1987 to 30 per cent in 1994. The UK, France, Germany and Italy accounted for 90 per cent of the arms exported by member states in the early 1990s.