There is a strong and clear case for voting Yes on the Nice Treaty referendum, and none for voting against, the former SDLP Leader, Mr John Hume, has declared.
Speaking yesterday alongside the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, and former Taoiseach, Dr Garret Fitzgerald, Mr Hume said he believed voters will have the wisdom to back the treaty.
Mr Hume said he had spoken to many leaders of countries in central Europe: "They have always seen Ireland as being their best friend in the European Union. If there was a No vote \ they would be deeply shocked. But I know that there won't be a No vote. I know that Irish voters have the greatest sympathy with people who have suffered."
The EU, he said, was the greatest movement to resolve problems peacefully in the history of the world, following the slaughter of millions in the first half of the last century.
A Yes vote will also strengthen Ireland's place in the EU, as the new member-states will know they are members because of the votes of the Southern Irish people.
Appealing to younger voters, Mr Hume said they were coping with the communications and technology revolution: "They are the generation that will build the new Ireland and the new Europe. Because of the changes taking place, they are much closer to the peoples of Europe than their grandparents, given that we are living in a smaller world."
Dr FitzGerald said people must oppose "the blatant attempt by extremes of left and right to mislead our electorate into sabotaging the enlargement of the EU".
For many decades, the European Union had created a zone of peace within which violence by one state against another in pursuit of national ambitions "has been abandoned for ever".
The ambitions of countries in central Europe to join the EU had prevented the "re-emergence of old territorial quarrels in some of these countries", for example between Hungary and Romania.
"I have to say that when the Iron Curtain fell I feared that some of those old quarrels would break out again. They did not," Dr FitzGerald told the joint press conference.
The countries now waiting to join the Union had until relatively recently suffered under communist regimes, which denied basic human rights to millions of people. "These countries suffered immense damage economically, socially and politically. With the fall of Soviet domination, they could easily have been dragged back into a spiral of ongoing conflict."
The EU's history, he said, had shown that membership benefits all countries, especially weaker and smaller. "They are ready. The question now is - are we willing to let them in?"
Rejection of the treaty would mean "delay and uncertainty and the potential loss of this historic opportunity". "Every member of the EU and every candidate country believes that Nice is necessary."
The peoples of central and eastern Europe had listened to the call of leaders such as the Czech President, Mr Vaclav Havel, to look West for a democratic and prosperous future.
"When they earned their freedom, the peoples of central and eastern Europe chose the route of peace and democracy. From the very beginning they have been focused on the objective of joining the EU," Dr FitzGerald asserted.
The Taoiseach criticised the leader of the No to Nice Campaign, Mr Justin Barrett, for attending a number of far-right events in Germany and elsewhere. "I think in our political lives, and in our lives generally, it is very good to declare where we are coming from," said Mr Ahern, who pointed to the campaign resources available to Mr Barrett's organisation.
