Partnership for Peace

PRESS RELEASE

9th October 1999

The refusal of the Government to hold a referendum on the so-called Partnership for Peace (PfP) has been condemned by John Goodwillie, the Green Party candidate in the Dublin South-Central by-election.

"It is outrageous that the Government should put this proposal through the Dáil while there is a by-election being contested, without even waiting for a result," he said. "The PfP is a programme of co-operation with the nuclear-armed alliance, NATO.

"NATO was designed to guard against the risk of Soviet expansion. Once that risk ended, NATO should have been dissolved. Instead, arms manufacturers have been foremost in making sure it continued, and that under the guise of Œinter-operability¹, a vast programme of arms buying would be put in motion.

"The Irish people have not yet been told what spending on arms the Irish Defence Forces will have to make.

"The idea that we have to join PfP in order to co-operate with United Nations peacekeeping is absurd. We have been peacekeeping in the Congo, the Lebanon, Bosnia, and now East Timor without being in PfP and we can continue doing this where it is justified. PfP is really just a way of edging us yet closer to NATO and towards abandoning any pretence at an independent foreign policy," he concluded. "As Bertie Ahern said in 1996, ŒIt is the thin end of a wedge.¹ His promise to hold a referendum before joining PfP is now seen, like so many others, as a promise made to be broken." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Contact: John Goodwillie: tel. 454 0194 / 087-231 1944


Green Party, Dublin South-Central