Deputy Bruton also touched on the Iraqi situation, and his views on security and defence were interesting ones which I would share. In recent weeks we have seen France wanting the EU to be a counterweight against the US, Spain wanting to play a bigger role in world affairs, a number of EU candidate states expressing their desire to be closer to the US. We relate this to Mr. Chirac's comments about the candidate states not having been very well-behaved. When all this is taken into consideration, it must be asked of Deputy Bruton what impact these national, EU and international priorities are having on the workings of the Convention over the past few weeks.