Confidence in the United Nations "has taken a battering and needs to be restored" after its failure to act in the Kosovo conflict, according to the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Ms Liz O'Donnell.
She said the refusal of Russia and China to approve intervention to stop the ethnic cleansing of Albanians raised questions about the credibility of the UN Security Council and the effectiveness of the UN.
The need to strengthen the UN's decision-making mechanisms as well as develop new instruments other than economic sanctions to put pressure on rogue states had been highlighted by the conflict.
She was speaking yesterday at an international affairs conference in Dublin organised by the Royal Irish Academy, on "Ireland and the Kosovo Conflict".
Ms O'Donnell said that while she felt the NATO intervention was justified there were questions about the campaign for which answers had yet to be given.
Among these were whether it was necessary to bomb certain buildings in Serbia and whether the mass movement of ethnic Albanians out of Kosovo was a reaction to the bombing or an orchestrated Serbian plan.
Mr Ray Murphy, a law lecturer at NUI Galway, said he was particularly disturbed by NATO's attack on the Serbian television centre in Belgrade. By deliberately targeting civilians, NATO was "in violation of the same humanitarian law it was seeking to defend". Transmission of propaganda was not a crime, he said. If it was, the BBC might be seen as a legitimate target for its stance on the Falklands and Gulf wars.
Mr Murphy said that even if NATO's intervention was morally correct, the means and purposes of that intervention were questionable.
Prof Nick Rees of the University of Limerick criticised the Government for being slow to react to the crisis. In a struggle to remain neutral, it had expressed its preference for UN intervention. But, in agreeing to EU joint statements, it implicitly endorsed the NATO bombings.
Overall, the Irish response was "very muted", said Prof Rees.
But Ms O'Donnell said Ireland had made a contribution in a wide range of areas, from funding relief efforts and providing troops for Kfor to offering shelter for Kosovan refugees.
