President McAleese: A request for Irish participation in a new United Nations (UN) peacekeeping mission to ease the crisis in Lebanon would be given "the most profound consideration", President Mary McAleese said yesterday. While stressing that she did not wish to "pre-empt" the outcome over the issue, she felt it would be very seriously considered.
There is already a small Irish military contingent of less than a dozen troops in southern Lebanon but any decision to join a new UN mission would have to be proposed by the Government and approved by the Dáil.
In response to a question from The Irish Times, Mrs McAleese said: "I am perfectly sure that the plan that is unfolding, that Kofi Annan is putting together, will be given the most profound consideration by any Irish government.
"Without again being able to pre-empt what the outcome might be, or indeed if such a plan will eventually be put into action, I have no doubt that if Kofi Annan were to put such a plan before the Irish Government it would be given the most profound consideration, given our historic commitment to Lebanon."
Mrs McAleese was speaking at a joint press conference in the Hofburg Palace with her Austrian counterpart, President Heinz Fischer, on the second day of her official visit to Austria. She noted that a small number of Irish and Austrian troops was currently on peacekeeping duties together on the Golan Heights, between Syria and Israel.
"And, of course, as you know, Ireland has a 20-year investment in Lebanon. It's not that terribly long ago that we had the stand-down parade for Lebanon and we thought that the job was complete and we looked forward to the people of Lebanon enjoying a future free from precisely what has unfolded over the last week or so." Ireland was a "very, very strong" supporter of the UN, she said. "We have many Irish lives lost in bringing peace to Lebanon."
President Fischer said that if a concrete proposal was made by the UN secretary general, Austria would consider it "very carefully" and "in a very constructive manner".
The crisis in the Middle East was among the issues discussed earlier, in an hour-long meeting between the two heads of state.
Afterwards, President McAleese said: "It already has drawn in too many hands at the work of digging this very big hole that we are all going to have to climb out of eventually. We would hope that the voices - already articulated very well by the Finnish [ EU] presidency - calling for reason, calm and proportionality and one country or group desisting from attacking another country, we would hope that those voices would be listened to in the interests of humanity and the future of all those countries and their populations."
Austria's chancellor, Wolfgang Schárssel, is not scheduled to meet Mrs McAleese during her visit and when the issue arose at the press conference, President Fischer explained that the Chancellor was "a convinced Catholic" and was currently on retreat in a monastery.
President McAleese pointed out that the chancellor had just emerged from a "very intensive" EU presidency. "I am probably one of perhaps a reasonably small number of heads of state who also make exactly the same kind of retreat every year, a closed retreat, that nothing on earth would drag me from," she said.
Speaking afterwards at a lunch hosted by President Fischer and his wife, Mrs McAleese said Ireland and Austria were "among the oldest and most faithful of friends" whose histories had intertwined at various times.
"The flight of the so-called 'Wild Geese' from an Ireland cruelly oppressed by her bigger neighbour brought many Irishmen to Austria in search of freedom and asylum," she said.
Now Ireland and Austria were building a "shared future" through the European Union on solid and age-old foundations."