EU: Participation by European Union battle groups in United Nations peacekeeping missions would mark "a huge step forward" for the world body, a leading UN official said in Dublin yesterday. The Government is currently considering a possible Irish role in these rapid-deployment multinational units drawn from different EU member states.
Mark Malloch Brown, chef de cabinet to UN secretary general Kofi Annan, told The Irish Times: "Disciplined European battle groups, which could be deployed quickly and had their own logistics and equipment coming as part of the package, would be a huge step forward."
Describing current problems in this area, he said: "It takes much too long to mount a peacekeeping operation and, when you do, it's a bit of a Heath Robinson affair with unmatching equipment, divided lines of command forces all too willing to pull out at the first sign of trouble."
The UN would welcome "multilateral forces which, unlike the ones we assemble at the moment, have trained together, have common equipment common lines of command.
"It's quite clear to us that Europe needs to get stuck back into peacekeeping. We drifted into a dangerous formula where peacekeepers tended to be brown and black, and the funders white, and that kind of ghettoisation of peacekeeping in some ways reduces its authority."
Acknowledging there were Irish sensitivities about neutrality, he said: "In a sense, the emollient to get over that would be to serve under the UN flag. It's a great way for old enemies to make up. After all, we have Indian and Pakistani peacekeepers, we have African neighbours whose local domestic relations aren't always that friendly, as major peacekeeper-providers.
"Soldiers, more than politicians and citizens, are sometimes much more pragmatic about settling down into a supportive companionship in these kinds of common missions, commonly serving humanity, than probably their political masters realise."
Mr Malloch Brown is among the speakers at a Royal Irish Academy conference today to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Ireland's accession to the UN.
On the outcome of last September's UN world summit, he said some progress had been made, but now these commitments to reform had to be implemented.
"We need the Irelands of this world to press hard to find a common centre because at the moment, in Yeats's words, the centre isn't holding. We've got a dramatic polarisation between the US on one side and developing countries on the other. We have to use Ireland and Europe to build bridges."