The Amsterdam Treaty is part of a continuing process of drawing European states into a military alliance, the Socialist Workers' Party claimed yesterday.
Starting its campaign for a No vote in the referendum, the party said the document's aspiration for a common foreign and security policy should be seen in the context of the warning of former EU Commission president, Mr Jacques Delors, that Europe would have to be prepared to fight "resources wars" in the next century.
Party spokesman Mr Kieran Allen said the treaty called for closer links with the Western European Union, "a military alliance which functions as the European wing of NATO and which is prepared to use nuclear weapons".
Mr Allen accused those who drafted the document of using "Orwellian double speak" in advocating the deployment of combat forces from the EU and WEU for "humanitarian" and "peacekeeping" missions abroad.
This was a cover for countries pursuing colonial activities, "like France helping the Hutu regime in Rwanda", he said. He also cited Somalia, where Canadian and American troops were guilty of "extraordinarily racist behaviour" towards the native people under the guise of humanitarianism.
He claimed the treaty would commit Ireland to support for the European armaments industry, by calling for a common defence policy to be backed up by "co-operation by states in the field of armaments". This was happening in the context of concerns that the European armaments industry was falling behind that of the US, he added.
But the vote was not only about Irish neutrality, he said.
"Only three countries - ourselves, Denmark, and Portugal - are getting a vote on the treaty. So we have a chance to exercise a verdict for all Europeans against the drift that Europe is taking."
