It is not the European Union versus the Third World, both are complementary. It is encouraging for the peace process, if not the Nice treaty, that Sinn Féin is now emerging as the latest champion of the sovereignty of the State which it denied and derided for so long, and of Irish neutrality which the IRA persistently flouted, always taking sides in internal conflicts around the world. Is it not wonderfully ironic that the Kaiser's Germany, according to the Easter Proclamation, was our gallant ally in Europe? While help was sought and accepted by the IRA from Nazi Germany, at the end of it all it is the united Federal Republic of Germany under Chancellors Köhl and Schröder that allegedly constitutes the real militaristic threat to Irish sovereignty and neutrality – a Germany that incidentally and for the moment at least will not support a US war on Iraq.