Yes and No sides put their case to forum

The Seville Declarations confirm "beyond all reasonable doubt" that nothing in the Nice Treaty undermines Ireland's neutrality, the Minister for Foreign Affairs told a meeting organised by the National Forum on Europe.

Mr Cowen said a Yes vote in the referendum would be a "yes to neutrality" thanks to the guarantee contained in the proposal to be put to the people. But he claimed the No campaign was being "deliberately disingenuous" by suggesting the EU's evolving military capacity compromised Ireland's independence in foreign policy.

Speaking in Newbridge, Co Kildare, where the meeting debated how Ireland's "values, traditions, and interests" could be promoted in the foreign and security policies of an enlarging EU, Mr Cowen said anti-Nice campaigners would have the electorate believe "military" was a "dirty word".

In fact, he said, the attempts to forge a common foreign and security policy were a response to the lessons learned when war in the former Yugoslavia "unleashed genocide and systematic abuses of human rights once again in Europe" and the EU was unable to act. The new arrangements allowed it to respond only in the context of "conflict prevention, humanitarian and crisis management tasks", the Minister said, and even then, the agreement of all member-states would be necessary.

But representing the No campaign at last night's event, Green Party TD Mr John Gormley said the Seville Declarations were "bogus" and the proposed constitutional amendment "even more bogus". The Nice Treaty campaign was repeating a pattern set by the Amsterdam Treaty, which delivered "the biggest blow" to the concept of Irish neutrality by facilitating the creation of the Rapid Reaction Force, he said.

A full report of the session will appear in tomorrow's newspaper.