February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
Bruton, who as leader of Fine Gael led the “rainbow” coalition government from November 1994 to June 1997, could be packing his bags for the U.S. as early as this summer.
The Irish Times reported that EU External Affairs Commissioner Chris Patten, was proposing Bruton as the best candidate to raise the EU’s political profile in the United States.
However, some of Bruton’s statements in the run-up to last year’s invasion of Iraq could hinder any efforts in that regard, particularly in any dealings with the Bush administration.
Bruton stated in March of last year that the Irish government should ban landings of U.S. troop-carrying planes at Shannon Airport if Iraq was invaded without United Nations backing.
Bruton did support the plan for war if it received sanction from the UN Security council. But he was adamant that U.S. flights should be stopped if there was no such approval. He also compared the bush administration’s advocacy of pre-emptive strikes to Hitler’s attack on Poland.
“If there isn’t,” Bruton said, “the Irish government has a clear obligation to withdraw any facilities at Shannon, immediately. Irish neutrality was defined in 1939 by a refusal by the then taoiseach, Eamon de Valera, to the British of use of ports.”
Bruton said if the government permitted the continued use of airports in a war without UN backing it would be a “complete breach” of Ireland’s policy of neutrality.
He said that if he was in Taoiseach Bertie Ahern’s position, he would have been making this clear to the U.S. for months.
“This is of paramount importance, more important than investment, more important than anything,” he told RTE at the time.
“I think the taoiseach must stand up for the rule of international law, a principle that was actually established by the Americans themselves but which is now unfortunately at the point of being abandoned,” Bruton said.
Both the U.S. and Britain had followed a policy that it was not appropriate to attack a UN member state “unless they first attacked you.”
“That policy,” he said, “is now about to be abandoned in favor of a doctrine of pre-emptive or preventive attacks which means that, basically, the policy adopted by Adolf Hitler when he claimed he was pre-empting something when he attacked Poland, could now become the order of the day in international relations.”
Regardless of Bruton’s criticism of the U.S. a year ago, the thinking in top EU circles is that Europe needs someone with political experience to raise the EU’s profile, particularly in Congress.
According to the Irish Times, the decision to appoint a political figure to Washington followed a discussion of transatlantic relations following the Iraq crisis, which was led by Ireland’s minister for foreign affairs, Brian Cowen.
Cowen told EU foreign ministers that the EU needed to cultivate political contacts in Washington if it hoped to influence future U.S. administrations.
A Commission source “confirmed” to the Irish Times that Commissioner Patten had already won the backing of a number of EU governments for Bruton’s appointment.
“Mr. Patten is understood to have taken Ireland’s close relationship with the U.S. into account in choosing his candidate,” the paper reported.