Ireland's involvement with the United Nations has been valuably highlighted by the Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan's, visit here this week, during which he paid tribute to this country's role and identified major issues facing the international organisation. Mr Annan is now well into his term of office and fully addressing the UN's political and structural problems.
He has demonstrated great skill in tackling them, in defining the opportunities and limits of his own leadership role and asserting the independence which must underlie it. As this State decides whether to deepen its involvement with security organisations in Europe, there is much it can learn from Mr Annan's perspectives on contemporary peacekeeping.
He makes much of how the end of the Cold War has altered the nature of peacekeeping. One major change is that the large powers and regional security organisations assume a larger role. As a result, the overall numbers drawn from the smaller neutral states such as Ireland have reduced. In resolving regional conflicts since 1989, involvements are shorter and there has been much less willingness to initiate longstanding forces such as Unifil in southern Lebanon.
Neutrality between warring states has given way to impartiality in the execution of the mandates agreed by the Security Council. Mr Annan cites the joint NATO/United Nations peacekeeping and peace building mission in Bosnia as a model. Mandate and legitimacy are intimately connected. In his interview with this newspaper today, Mr Annan makes it clear how sensitive and important a matter this is in Iraq and Kosovo.
In each of the European neutral states, a debate has developed on how they should relate to the changed nature of alliances and security organisations after the end of the Cold War. Unfortunately Ireland's debate is relatively underdeveloped in this respect. There has been a great reluctance to contemplate involvement in organisations associated with NATO, particularly the Partnership for Peace (PfP), based on the false assumption that this would be a half-way house to joining that alliance. In fact membership is based on a flexible formula negotiated on a case by case basis.
All the other neutral countries are PfP members, as are the Russians and most of the ex-communist states. This is the setting in which new patterns of peacekeeping and regional security practices are being developed in Europe. Now that the Government has initiated a political debate on joining PfP, it is to be hoped the issue can be speedily resolved. Mr Annan was careful not to become involved in this discussion. He paid tribute to Ireland's UN peacekeeping record by saying Ireland's troops "are well trained, they have the right temperament and they have done extremely well. They are highly respected and popular among other nations".
These characteristics are best preserved and developed by participating in regional security organisations on which the UN itself is now increasingly relying.