The Ireland Kosova Solidarity Group has called on the Government to support unambiguously "all necessary political and military means . . . to restore to the Kosovar people their legitimate political and human rights".
However, the pro-neutrality National Platform has said NATO action against the Milosevic regime would be "criminally obscene and politically irresponsible". Russia and China would block attempts to get a UN mandate for such action, so Ireland should therefore oppose the use of force.
The Ireland Kosova Solidarity Group (Kosovan Albanians call the province Kosova, Serbs call it Kosovo) said it reluctantly supported the use of force as a way of persuading the Yugoslav President, Mr Slobodan Milosevic, to accept NATO's demands. "The underlying purpose of Western intervention should be to establish the conditions whereby the people of Kosova can express their legitimate right to self determination," according to the group. "If, in the light of their experience under Serbian rule the Kosovars opt for independence, that decision should be respected by the international community.
"To refuse to recognise the democratically expressed wishes of the Kosovars in the supposed interests of `regional stability' would, in reality, be to create a wider destabilisation within the Balkans."
However, the National Platform said bombings and Cruise missile strikes would be "in flagrant breach of international law without a UN Security Council mandate, which Russia and China are opposed to . . . For NATO to attack a sovereign State because of misconduct within its borders would be a precedent for further such action at any time in the future. It would introduce the principle of anarchy into international relations."
The group maintained that military action would also strengthen Mr Milosevic politically and "would almost certainly worsen rather than alleviate the plight" of the Kosovo refugees.
"The real motivation of the NATO bomb-the-Serbs brigade is to give NATO political credibility in the eyes of a gung-ho media by being shown to be `doing something' over Kosovo, without losing any American, British, French or German lives in the process.
"A secondary motive is Germany's desire to advance further the break-up of former Yugoslavia . . . German intelligence is reported to have been one of the suppliers of the Kosovo Liberation Army. Germany promises soldiers and war-planes to bomb Yugoslavia. Yet Germany ravaged Yugoslavia and supported fascist Croatia during the second World War. It is outrageous that it should now intervene there again," the group said.
NATO would be denied the use of Hungarian airspace if it launches a strike against Yugoslavia before parliament holds a full session today or tomorrow, a government spokesman said yesterday.
"If that were to be the case, they would have to avoid Hungary," the spokesman, Mr Gabor Borokai, told reporters after a meeting of the leaders of the six parliamentary parties. "Without parliamentary approval, NATO cannot use Hungarian airspace."
The Foreign Minister, Mr Janos Martonyi, said earlier yesterday in Kiev that Hungary was likely to agree to the NATO request to use its airspace.