Positions are rapidly - too rapidly - being taken up on the Government's decision to explore possible membership of Nato's Partnership for Peace organisation as proposed this week in its White Paper on Foreign Policy. One of the Coalition parties, Democratic Left, restated its opposition to joining yesterday, while the leader of Fianna Fail, Mr Ahern, ever alert to tactical advantage, called for a referendum to be held on the matter. The Government's failure to hold its collective act together on such a modest proposal is unfortunate. It needs to redouble its efforts to explain the issues at stake and not to allow them to be foreclosed by mendacious misrepresentation.
The Partnership for Peace is not, as its critics suggest, a backdoor to Nato membership for the unsuspecting. It is rather a response to the completely new landscape of European security opened up by the end of the Cold War. It offers a selective and flexible means of co operation on military and peacekeeping matters to states which are anxious to escape from the adversarial structures imposed by the confrontation between the two main military blocs surrounding the United States and the Soviet Union during that period.
Its objectives are acceptable to an Ireland that subscribes to the UN Charter and to all inclusive regional bodies such as the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Only a very small minority of European states have so far failed to join it, including neutral states and those that were formerly members of the Warsaw Pact. Whether it makes sense to join PEP, or to participate in the humanitarian and peacekeeping tasks of its sister organisation, the Western European Union, on a case by case basis, will be decided by the Government only after the proposed discussions. There is no legal or political obligation to join either organisation unless the Government decides to do so, which has so far been ruled out.
These matters cannot be examined in a political vacuum. Today in Turin, European Union heads of State and Government meet to inaugurate negotiations on an Inter Governmental Conference to review how the Union is governed, including its foreign policy, security and defence structures. The conference is just one of a series of negotiations over the next few years that will have a crucial bearing on this State's position and role in the EU, whether on monetary union, the Common Agricultural Policy, structural funds or political structures. There are no easy choices in such a complex and far reaching agenda for any of the member states, Ireland included. It will be necessary to participate fully in order to maximise information and options across the range of interests, and not only on the ones concerning security and defence.
The issues were spelled out clearly and comprehensively in the Government's White Paper this week. It does not augur well for the political debate that is necessary on them, as Ireland prepares to take up the EU presidency, that the PEP and the WEU should be so misrepresented, or that the options open to this State in Europe should be so constrained. Neutral states are presented with many of the same dilemmas as aligned ones by the transformation of European security. Their interests are best protected and defined by participating in and influencing the negotiations on the continent's future, rather than by standing aside.