ON Monday evening the Department of Foreign Affairs issued a "Declaration of the Presidency on behalf of the European Union on Burundi".
Recalling the five statements it has issued on the same subject since June 25th it reiterated its "deep concern about the situation in Burundi". It urged "all sides to refrain from violence and to commit themselves to, and work actively towards, a negotiated and peaceful resolution of the crisis". It meandered on in this vein for a total of six paragraphs, calling for dialogue, a democratic institutional consensus, an immediate halt to violence and all that stuff. Waffle.
Waffle by the Irish Presidency of the European Union in the face of a massive humanitarian crisis.
Between 500,000 and one million people have been killed in Burundi in the last 25 years, out of a total population of six million. In the last month alone thousands of people have been killed, and there are ominous signs that the wave of genocide which swept neighbouring Rwanda two years ago will now engulf Burundi. The scale of the calamity facing Burundi is therefore now enormous, far greater than anything that faced Bosnia Herzegovina.
In the case of Bosnia, our Government, in common with the British government and in the face of opposition from the US and a number of other European governments, favoured doing nothing to stop the genocide that was happening there in 1993 and 1994.
Actually, we were not just in favour of doing nothing, we were in favour of enforcing an arms embargo against the Bosnian Muslim population which, primarily, was the victim of the genocidal war there. Then also there was the usual guff about the need to resolve the dispute in a peaceful manner and in dialogue and all that, while the Muslim population was being massacred.
The genocide there stopped only when the US and then the UN intervened militarily - an action that the Irish Government had vigorously opposed.
ONE might have thought that some lessons would have been learnt from the shame of that episode in the exercise off our foreign policy which, surrounded with all the blather about neutrality, is assumed so widely to be "moral" and "principled". But not a bit of it.
It is true that we haven't been calling - as yet anyway - for an arms embargo against the Hutu population of Burundi, which is the victim of the genocide. But we are certainly very much in favour of us and the rest of the world standing on the sidelines, wringing our hands and uttering banal pieties.
What else can we do?
Remember we hold the presidency of the European Union right now and are therefore, unusually, in a position to exercise some influence on the foreign policy of the EU. We might, for instance, start talking in terms of a military intervention in Burundi and, possibly, Rwanda as well, to hold the peace there until some kind of political resolution to the ethnic conflict can be established.
Yes, that talk would be regarded by some of our European partners as just more Irish blarney, given the much heralded Irish timidity about actually doing anything in the sphere of foreign relations.
But we did get around to amending the Defence Act in 1993 to permit an Irish involvement in the Somali peace enforcement exercise (previously only UN operations in connection with "duties of a police character" were permitted by law) and we could make it clear that Irish forces would be prepared to serve in such a force for Burundi.
Mention of the UN involvement in Somalia will evoke a predictable rejoinder: that that exercise "proved" the inevitable failure of UN "peace enforcement" involvements. It "proved" nothing of the kind.
Before the UN "peace enforcement" involvement in Somalia there was widespread famine, caused in the main by the civil war, which had led to the death of up to one million people. The effect of the UN "peace enforcement" involvement was to end the famine and save the lives of hundreds of thousands of Somalis. Some failure!
The problem with that mission was that there was confusion of authority, The initial involvement was a US one, "approved" by the UN, and when it was then transformed into a UN operation the transition resulted in operational confusion.
There was also a confusion of objectives. Initially the objective was merely to enforce a peace but then it became a "nation building" operation, following the passing of a resolution (814) by the Security Council. That resolution led to the prosecution of a war against one faction and one faction leader, Gen Aideed (recently deceased).
This, in turn, led to a minor bloodbath but, more significantly, to the collapse of the political will, especially in the US, for any continuing involvement.
One can be cynical about the American political will in such matters and contrast the flight from Somalia with the persistence in the Gulf when oil supplies were at stake. But it should also be noted that the Americans have given military support to protect the Kurds in Iraq after the ending of the war against Saddam Hussein: they did intervene in Somalia and their presence in Bosnia has been vital in securing an end (however temporary) to the conflict there.
THERE is another reason why the state that holds the presidency of the European Union should be concerned about what is going on in Burundi. The African state is a former colony of two member states of the European Union, Belgium and Germany.
It is true that Burundi is not the artificial creation of colonial powers - it was a separate kingdom before Germany became involved in the middle of the last century and Belgium after the first World War. But both powers, especially Belgium, heightened the existing ethnic tensions in the country between the majority Hutu population (85 per cent) and the minority Tutsi population (14 per cent) by helping to rig the political, administrative, economic and social infrastructure to favour the Tutsis.
In that pathetic little document that passes for a White Paper on Foreign Policy, published amid fanfare a few months ago, there are a few pieties offered about UN "peace enforcement" operations. It notes: "Article 2.7 of the (United Nations) Charter indicates that the UN is not authorised to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state'."
But it goes on to acknowledge: "A restrictive application of this Article would leave the UN open to the charge of indifference in the face of the often overwhelming humanitarian crises which arise from such conflicts."
If that acknowledgment means anything it must mean that more than banalities are required in the face of the overwhelming humanitarian crisis in Burundi.