THE Fianna Fail leader accused the Minister for Agriculture of "maladministration" in his handling of the BSE crisis.

If Mr Yates had agreed to the exclusion of Cork, Tipperary and Monaghan from the Russian market without the Taoiseach's knowledge and backing, he should be sacked, said Mr Bertie Ahern.

"The farm organisations have lost confidence in this fairweather Minister, who is showing over and over again that he is not good at handling political pressure in a crisis," he added. "How can anyone have confidence in Minister Yates to protect or promote any vital national interest in future?"

The choice of the three counties was totally illogical and did not relate to the incidence of BSE per capita.

"But, of course, the Minister had a keen political interest in ensuring that objective criteria were not used, because if he was choosing the three counties with the highest per capita incidence of BSE, Wexford would have been included, rather than Cork, which is only sixth on the list and Tipperary, which is ninth.

"Indeed, Tipperary is administered, to all intents and purposes, as two counties, and the South Riding is completely free of BSE to date. But to have insisted on a scrupulously fair approach could have cost the Minister his seat in a keenly contested constituency at the next general election."

While the Minister had offered to travel to Moscow he did not, apparently, travel up the road to Dublin Airport. This despite telling the public that he had done a deal with the Russians last Saturday at 1 p.m. in the airport's VIP lounge and subsequently that the gun was put to his head.

"The gun that was held to his head must have been one of those long range Iraqi super guns. We were all given the impression that the Minister was some latter day Michael Collins, facing from a Russian Minister a threat of immediate and terrible war on the trade front, if he did not agree immediately to Russian demands.

Why did he allow 11 days to elapse before correcting the record...?

"In 1921, we had to sign away six counties. This time, we signed away another three. But the ultimatum did not even come from a Russian Minister. It came from three vets. This is no sort of way of carrying on intergovernmental

Suggesting that the Taoiseach must have been fully briefed on what was going on, Mr Ahern said that the affair had all the hallmarks of Mr Bruton's "blundering style of diplomacy, which we have seen in other vital areas".

He said the Tanaiste had consistently refused for political reasons to authorise a meeting of the joint Ireland Iranian commission or to go to Iran to secure the reopening of the market there.

"I regard his attitude as craven, and out of keeping with Ireland's independent foreign policy tradition. . . I always get the feeling that relating to issues other than Northern Ireland our Foreign Minister, Deputy Spring, is simply going through the motions without any particularly strong interest or commitment, no doubt fatigued by his non stop jet travel and overnight stays in overheated luxury hotels. Management of foreign policy has become dull, uninspired and unimaginative."