Seanad debates
Wednesday, 26 February 2003
Convention on the Future of Europe: Statements.
I found the past few weeks fairly depressing, particularly in the context of common foreign and security policy, but at the same time it illustrates a difficulty which, I suppose, in our heart of hearts we have always known existed. If you put the Foreign Affairs Minister of the member states into a room and give them almost any substantive issue of foreign policy, they can come up with a common position, and we saw some evidence of that last Monday in Brussels. There is not a huge amount of disagreement on substantive issues, including Iraq, but none of us seriously believes that Prime Minister Blair would be looking to send British troops into Iraq were it not for the fact that George Bush wants to do it. That is the serious fault line and the serious problem with the Common Foreign and Security Policy.
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