EU Meeting: The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, has indicated that the Government will not endorse a US-led attack on Iraq but he left open the possibility of the continuing use of Shannon Airport by US forces.
Speaking in Brussels before a meeting of EU foreign ministers, Mr Cowen said that the two issues, to be discussed at Cabinet today, were separate.
He recalled that the Taoiseach had spoken in the past about the political imperative of a second resolution before any military campaign is launched and had promised to review the use of Shannon.
"As we said then, as we say now, that would have required a second resolution for endorsement of and participation in any military action. The question, of course, relating to the continuing use of Shannon is a separate issue - one that has to be dealt with, in precedent, in the past and one that will be discussed by the Cabinet tomorrow," Mr Cowen said.
A senior diplomatic source told The Irish Times that the Cabinet was likely to approve the continued use of Shannon Airport by US forces travelling to the Gulf. The source suggested that, while the Government would not endorse war against Iraq, it would not condemn Washington's action either.
EU divisions over Iraq remained clear last night as the foreign ministers gathered in advance of tomorrow's meeting of EU leaders. The EU's foreign policy chief, Mr Javier Solana, expressed frustration at the failure of diplomatic efforts to disarm Iraq peacefully.
"War, as we know, is the last resort. We would have liked to find a solution for the disarmament of Saddam Hussein peacefully. Unfortunately that seems to be very difficult at this point in time," he said.
A spokesman for the Commission President, Mr Romano Prodi, expressed regret at the decision to press ahead with war without a new UN resolution.
"Unilateral action seems about to be taken by some countries, and we regret that. We continue to argue that UN approval was important and is still important. We have to try to put the process back on a UN track," he said.
Officials are pessimistic about the prospect of any agreement on Iraq when the EU leaders discuss the issue over dinner tomorrow.
Some member-states hope that the leaders will be able to agree that the UN should play a leading role in the reconstruction of Iraq once war ends. But Germany's Foreign Minister, Mr Joschka Fischer, said last night that it was too soon to talk about reconstruction.
The summit is likely to end by lunch-time on Friday, some hours earlier than planned. A two-hour session with the President of the Convention on the Future of Europe, Mr Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, has been dropped from the programme. The President of the European Parliament, Mr Pat Cox, will now meet the leaders on Thursday evening rather than Friday morning, which will be devoted to a discussion of economic matters.
Mr Cox has called an extraordinary session of the European Parliament for tomorrow morning to discuss the crisis over Iraq.
