Republican Sinn Fein has declared its opposition to the Treaty of Nice on the basis that it marks a further stage in the centralisation of power, domination by the larger European states and the militarisation of the European Union.
"The army of the 26-county State will become a mere regiment of the new European army," the RSF president, Mr Ruairi O Bradaigh, said in Dublin yesterday.
Mr O Bradaigh said his party supported the removal of the death penalty from the 1937 Constitution. On the establishment of an International Criminal Court he said that "while agreeing with the concept, enough information is not yet available to take a position".
Voting No to the Nice Treaty might be the last chance to "put the brakes" on the abandonment of neutrality.
In a speech prepared for an anti-Nice meeting in Dublin organised by the Socialist Alliance, Mr Andy Storey of the radical campaigning group, Action from Ireland (Afri), said the military equipment pledged by Britain to the Rapid Reaction Force (RRF) included two nuclear-powered submarines.
"Does this sound like peacekeeping equipment?" he asked.
Government representatives had given assurances that Irish troops would only be deployed when the RRF operated under a UN mandate. "There is nothing in the Nice Treaty, or in any other EU treaty, that guarantees the RRF must operate under a UN mandate. In any event, a UN mandate has itself become an elastic concept," he said.
"The sanctions imposed on the Iraqi people, which cause the deaths of 5,000 children a month, are mandated by the UN, manipulated as it is by the United States in particular."