The European Union should do more to assist the United Nations in dealing with threats to international peace and security, the Minister for Foreign Affairs has said.
Mr Cowen told a conference in Dublin that Ireland fully supported moves to strengthen co-operation between the two organisations.
Outlining the Government's approach to participation in the EU Rapid Reaction Force, the Minister indicated that Irish involvement would be limited to operations mandated by the UN Security Council and in accordance with the UN Charter.
Mr Cowen was delivering the opening address to a one-day conference at the Royal Irish Academy on "Challenges to Liberal Internationalism", hosted by the academy's National Committee for the Study of International Affairs.
He said Ireland was determined to make "an effective and realistic contribution" during its two-year term on the UN Security Council, which begins next January.
"Ireland will be making decisions on issues of international peace and security that come before the council," he said. "Critical to all these decisions will be the ongoing ability of the international community through the UN and through its co-operation with relevant regional organisations to deploy resources for conflict prevention, peacekeeping and crisis management, including for humanitarian operations."
The most recent effort to address these concerns had been the Brahimi Report on UN peace operations, which stressed the need to strengthen the UN's rapid reaction capability.
On November 13th the Security Council adopted Resolution 1327, giving its backing to many of the report's recommendations.
The Minister said this was of particular relevance to the EU Headline Goal of establishing a 60,000-strong Rapid Reaction Force by 2003, to meet the peacekeeping and crisis-management objectives known as the Petersberg Tasks.
"As you know, earlier this week I attended the European Union Capabilities Commitment Conference in Brussels. The purpose of the conference was to provide an opportunity for the EU, and third countries, to indicate formally the capabilities which they can make available for any potential humanitarian or other crisis-management operations.
"It is no accident that our commitment to the Headline Goal is for up to 850 members of the Defence Forces from within the current United Nations Standby Arrangements System Commitment of 850.
"As far as Ireland is concerned the development of the EU's security and defence policy and in particular its capabilities to conduct Petersberg Tasks, which is what the Headline Goal is about, is for operations that will be mandated by the Security Council and in accordance with the UN Charter.
"There are proposals under discussion at present between the UN and the EU to further develop and strengthen co-operation in respect of crisis management issues, and for our part we will be giving these our full support.
"The European Union is a zone of peace, prosperity and stability. It can and should do more to assist the UN to respond to humanitarian crises and other threats to international peace and security as they arise, and the Headline Goal will be a very important enhancement of the EU's and the international communities' capabilities in this regard.
"Just as the UN Standby Arrangements System, UNSAS, does not create a UN army, neither does the EU Headline Goal create an EU army.
"Both systems work on the basis of states indicating in principle what resources they are willing to make available for conflict prevention, peacekeeping, crisis management and humanitarian operations. Under both systems it remains the sovereign decision of each state on a case-by-case basis if and when to deploy its forces. Any suggestions to the contrary are simply misleading," Mr Cowen said.
In a paper on "Tackling Global Inequality", Dr Peadar Kirby of Dublin City University said the gap between the rich and poor of the world was returning as an issue of serious concern in international politics.
"Unprecedented peace and prosperity are the lot of the world's most developed states: side by side with this we have collapsing states in which the very basis of peaceful co-existence among neighbours has been brutally undermined, perhaps irrevocably; we have growing poverty amid abundant plenty; and we have vocal dissent emerging at the very nature of our present world order."