EU Foreign and Defence Ministers, meeting formally for the first time yesterday, agreed to allow the EU's foreign and security policy co-ordinator, Mr Javier Solana, to accept the job of head of the Western European Union (WEU) next week.
The meeting also backed moves to set up new security structures inside the EU to create its own peacekeeping and crisis-management capability.
The debate, a prelude to formal decisions at the Helsinki summit next month, is now likely to be expanded, with proposals coming from the British and French for the establishment of a 40,000-strong, rapid-reaction capability.
The joint proposal which is likely to emerge formally from an Anglo-French summit in 10 days involves the EU member-states committing themselves to being able to deploy a multinational force within six weeks and setting up a mechanism for co-ordinating the various national components that would become available to such a force when required.
The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Andrews, yesterday rejected suggestions that the security developments within the EU represented any threat to Irish neutrality.
He said that the "double-hatting" of Mr Solana represented a way of maintaining the impetus of the developments made possible by the Treaty of Amsterdam.
Ireland was "very happy" with the appointment. Irish and neutral concerns were met, Mr Andrews said, by the ring-fencing of Mr Solana's role in the WEU in the formal "opinion" submitted by the EU's Political Committee to the meeting of ministers.
The Political Committee, which consists of Political Directors from all the member-states, prepares the agenda of ministerial meetings.
The opinion states that it is "stressed that the appointment of Mr Solana as secretary general of the WEU would not constitute a precedent for future EU decisions and actions, nor would it commit the EU to any further role in a Common European Security and Defence Policy than the one defined in the Treaty of the European Union or in the decisions of the European Council in Cologne".
And it recalls that Cologne "emphasised that the different status of the member-states with regard to collective defence guarantees [i.e., the neutrals] would not be affected by the implementation of these decisions".
In other words, while Mr Solana's role in the WEU will not actually be curtailed, any involvement by him in matters relating to Article 5 mutual defence guarantees are not to be seen as implicating the EU.
On the prospects for a rapid-reaction force, Mr Andrews said he did not think it would be likely to happen soon and that Ireland had demonstrated in Kosovo, Bosnia, and East Timor its ability to react fast. Ireland would maintain what he called "moral neutrality".
Asked how he felt about doing both jobs, Mr Solana said: "I have the energy to do them."
Explaining the rationale of the appointment, he said the key challenge for the WEU at present was to assess what assets it could contribute to the EU and it made sense for one person to co-ordinate that work in both organisations.
The Cologne summit agreed to enhance the EU's military capacity for crisis-management and peacekeeping, the so-called "Petersberg Tasks", by allowing the EU to asset-strip the Western European Union while maintaining notionally separate institutional existences.
What will happen to the WEU when that process is completed in a year or two is not yet clear.
Ministers also agreed yesterday to establish structures under which non-EU member states could participate fully in EU-led operations.
Reuters adds: Washington should no longer have to shoulder the bulk of security needs in Europe, NATO's general secretary, Mr George Robertson, said in speech in Amsterdam yesterday.
