February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
Haass expressed his anger at a press conference in Dublin Tuesday following talks on the North with Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and Ireland’s foreign minister, Brian Cowen.
Haass emphasized how important it was for American equipment and personnel to be physically safe at Shannon as they transit to the Persian Gulf. He said he was pleased with security assurances he had received from the Irish government.
“Shannon Airport is extremely useful to the U.S. in moving the amount of supplies to the area on a timetable,” Haass said. “Speaking as an American and not simply an official, these attacks are outrageous. I come from a society which is one of the world’s strongest democracies, as is this country. There is a place in a democratic society for free expression of dissent. But this is not about dissent. This is about violent, illegal actions. It goes well beyond ironic for so-called advocates of peace to be using armed, physical force to promote their views.”
Against the backdrop of the attacks, Irish defense minister Michael Smith said a company of 120 armed soldiers would now back up gardai and airport security staff at Shannon on an around-the-clock basis.
“The government has a very clear duty to ensure the law of the country is upheld,” he said. “Nobody has the right to damage property and to use the threat of violence or engage in mindless vandalism.”
The decision to deploy troops came after a second attack in less than a week by anti-war activists on a U.S. Navy plane at Shannon.
An embarrassed Bertie Ahern angrily condemned the latest attack, saying it threatened the economic future of Shannon.
Five anti-war protestors, three women and two men from Dublin, one a student priest, were charged in connection with the attack at a special sitting of Ennis Court.
Gardai said they claimed to be from a “pacifist Catholic worker movement.”
The latest attack happened in an airport hanger at 4 a.m. Monday. Gardai said the five broke into the hanger and temporarily overpowered a policeman before reinforcements arrived and they were arrested. The lone officer was treated in hospital after the incident.
An anti-war activist, Mary Kelly, from Athlone, Co. Westmeath, had previously attacked the same aircraft with a hatchet on Jan. 29 when it was parked overnight at the airport. She is facing criminal charges. In that attack, the aircraft suffered an estimated euro 500,000 worth of damage and it had been taken to the hanger for repairs.
Kelly was last in the news when she attended protests against Israeli military actions against Palestinian towns. She was trapped for a time in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem last year, when the church was surrounded by Israeli troops.
The latest attack was the third recent security breach at Shannon. Four months ago, a peace activist scaled the perimeter fence and spray-painted an anti-war slogan on a U.S. military plane.
Anti-war protestors set up the peace camp at the airport as part of a campaign against the use of Shannon to transit and refuel U.S. military planes and civil aircraft chartered to carry troops to the Gulf.
Organizers said this week that they would be breaking up the camp but would continue their protests in other ways.
According to Irish government figures, civilian flights carrying troops were arriving at the airport at the rate of over four a day last month. Peace activists claim the use of the airport by the U.S. military in the build up to a possible attack on Iraq contravenes the Ireland’s traditional policy of military neutrality.
However, minister Cowen defended U.S. use of the airport in the Dail last week during a series of stormy exchanges between government and opposition members.
The six Green TDs staged an anti-war protest during the debate. They held up placards spelling out “No to War” and then walked out of the chamber. A motion calling for a withdrawal of landing and refueling facilities at Shannon for U.S. troop-carrying planes was defeated by 73 votes to 55.
The so-called “technical” group of the Greens, Sinn Fein, the Socialist Party and independent TDs had supported it.
Cowen said the practice of facilitating military overflights and landings dated back through the Cold War and all the conflicts of the last 50 years. He said that to say there was a new policy that undermined the traditional military neutrality was “nonsense” and “political opportunism.”
During the debate, the Green Party’s John Gormley accused Cowen of having “blood on his hands” and strongly criticized him for too quickly jumping to the defense of the U.S.
“This is a minister who has become very good at jumping,” he said. “The only question is how high and that is determined by George W Bush. There is something rather pathetic about this self-styled rottweiler now becoming a performing poodle,” Gormley said.
Cowen took “grave exception” to the accusation of having blood on his hands.
Meanwhile, a U.S. Navy spokesman said that the damaged plane would remain at Shannon for necessary repairs.