THE FINNISH President has dismissed the concept of "Cold War neutrality" while hailing the Nato sponsored Partnership for Peace programme as a model for future common security tasks in Europe.
Speaking in Dublin yesterday, Mr Martti Ahtisaari also called, for closer links between the EU and the Western European Union (WEU). "There is no need for bold War neutrality any more. Instead, Finland pursues a foreign and security policy based on independent defence, military non alignment and working actively for co-operative security arrangements."
As President of Finland, one of Ireland's fellow neutral states within the EU, Mr Ahtisaari's view of neutrality differs greatly from that of those who believe the recent White Paper on Foreign Policy here suggests the compromising of Irish neutrality.
The White Paper commits the Government to exploring involvement in Partnership for Peace (PFP), and to the possibility of carrying out humanitarian and peacekeeping tasks with the WEU.
Fianna Fail and a number of campaigning groups have criticised such proposals, saying that they could endanger Irish neutrality through involving the State with Nato and nuclear powers.
According to Mr Ahtisaari, PFP has emerged as "a workable innovation" which "made the Nato led Ifor operation possible in the former Yugoslavia. Cold War adversaries," he said, "are now co operating in the field of military security with great success. I believe that PFP and Ifor "constitute, if further developed and commonly accepted, a most promising model for common security tasks in Europe."
The Finnish President was speaking to the Institute of European Affairs in Dublin yesterday evening on the first day of a three day state visit to Ireland.
Yesterday morning he called on the President, Mrs Robinson, at Aras an Uachtarain and planted a tree in the garden. In the evening he was guest of honour at a state dinner in Dublin Castle, while today he will meet the Taoiseach and opposition leaders. Tomorrow he travels to Galway for a number of engagements before leaving Ireland on Friday.
Finland, for most of the period following the end of the second World War, strive to be neutral as it balanced delicate relations with the west and with its huge Soviet neighbour. But a likely eastward expansion of Nato has caused debate on whether Finland can stay out of the new security structures created by the alliance's enlargement.
Yesterday Mr Ahtisaari said Finland would maintain its traditional non alignment, but he distanced himself from the strict neutrality of the past, and said his country was working actively for co-operative security arrangements"
Finland and Ireland snared, common interests, he said, which called for close co-operation. Throughout history small states, had been regarded as doomed from the moment of their birth.
In 1940, Soviet foreign minister Molotov told his Lithuanian counterpart. You have to be a realist and grasp that the time for small states is over. The Soviet Union no longer exists," said Mr Ahtisaari, "whereas Lithuania has regained its independence. Here history is vindicating justice, not brutal power.
The EU's basic problem was not the existence of self confident smaller states, but the fact that the larger states did not see the Union as being capable of protecting and advancing their interests, Mr Ahtisaari said.
Finland and Sweden had proposed that the EU must be able to carry out humanitarian and rescue operations and peacekeeping and crisis management tasks, he said. These would be carried out on a mandate from the United Nations or the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
"For the Union to be able to use military means of crisis management there must be closer linkage with the Western European Union. All Union members should have the opportunity to participate, on a basis of equality, in decision making on and implementation of operations conducted by the WEU on the EU's behalf."
Mr Ahtisaari said that after 16 months of EU membership, Finland was adapting to its new position. Union membership had made it easier to promote structural economic changes, there were difficult agricultural changes taking place, food prices had fallen by 10 per cent and the state aimed to meet the criteria for Economic and Monetary Union.