‘Moral obligation’ to protest Bush visit, says Rabbitte

LABOUR Party leader Pat Rabbitte last night launched his strongest public criticism of US foreign policy, saying his party would launch a campaign of “disagreement” coinciding with the visit of President George Bush to Ireland in June.

In his opening speech at the Labour Party Conference in Dublin, last night Mr Rabbitte also made a detailed attack on the Government’s citizenship referendum proposals and sent a direct message to republicans on paramilitarism. It was “make your mind up time”, he said.

Mr Rabbitte said his party, along with Fine Gael and the Green Party, would call for the referendum to be deferred until after the local and European elections on June 11 and to have the proposed amendment referred to the All Party Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution.

Describing the Government’s reasons for “rushing” through the proposal as “bogus”, he derided the policy as mean-spirited, dangerous and wrong.

“The [Coalition parties] are doing it in the hope of making electoral gain,” he claimed. “Fianna Fáil candidates have already begun to use the issue in their literature and on the doorsteps.

“FF in particular believe that in raising the issue of race,” he contended, “they can encourage people to exercise their worst instincts about newcomers rather than their best. The PDs, and Michael McDowell in particular, are willing patsies in the exercise.”

Speaking to his parliamentary party and national executive in the RDS last night, Mr Rabbitte said one loophole had already emerged in the new legislation being introduced by the Government.

Partly as a result of the Good Friday agreement, he said, the residency requirement to become citizens is waived for British parents, irrespective of where they live in the world. A non-national arriving into Ireland in the late stage of pregnancy could say the father of the child was British.

He went on: “To coin a phrase, the legislation fails to do what it says on the tin. They say they want to close off loopholes. In fact they are creating the danger of new ones.”

He then strongly reiterated his message to the republican movement that it was “make your mind up” time on paramilitarism.

He also gave the first formal indication that the Labour Party will not oppose the visit of President Bush to Ireland in June.

He went on to say, however, that the Irish people should not “remain silent during the visit. We have a democratic right to protest and a moral obligation to say we disagree.”

Announcing a campaign, titled ‘Don’t Count Us In’, on US foreign policy, he said Labour was sending the Bush administration a strong message that it disagreed profoundly with its foreign policies.