A lot done, very little left to do at EU level

Political Editor Harry McGee says after our successful presidency, thoughts now turn to domestic affairs.

IT has all been played out. In two days time, Ireland’s six-month presidency will have come to an end. At Dromoland Castle this weekend, the Taoiseach was tying up the loose strings, namely a tricky EU-US summit and reaching agreement on a new President of the Commission.

Both challenges have now been all but done. George Bush has come and gone. The unassuming Portugese prime minister Jose Manuel Durao Barroso now looks certain to be ratified as Romano Prodi’s successor tomorrow night. Bertie Ahern’s problems from here on in will be domestic ones.

In a sense, the smaller than expected turn-out for the protest marches in Shannon and Ennis over the weekend signalled that the deep-felt divisions over the US-led invasion of Iraq may also be largely played out.

On the same day that the Irish Presidency comes to an end, the US will hand over administrative power to a new Iraqi government, albeit one without a democratic franchise. While many of the seven agenda items for the summit had already been substantively agreed at the G8 summit in Sea Island, Georgia, earlier this month, from the American perspective, the joint EU-US declaration on Iraq that emerged on Saturday needed to have potency and authority.

The US President highlighted in the post-summit press conference the letter sent last week by the Iraqi prime minister Dr Ayad Allawi to NATO requesting assistance in training his security forces. Both the US and Britain hope that the hand-over of power may entice more European countries to contribute troops to deal with the continuing volatility there.

It was outgoing Commission President Romano Prodi who perhaps best summarised the new prevailing mood on Iraq. “The bitter differences are over,” he said, before adding that Iraq was now a common interest and a common goal for both the EU and the US.

It now seems that Europe has reached a point where the recriminations and debate over the rights and wrongs of the US and British invasion of Iraq have really come to an end.

The problem is now and the future and how to deal with what most leaders in Europe portray as a mess. Yes, America may have come late to the concept of multilateralism as it applies to Iraq. And many still harbour anger and bitterness at the way in which it ignored the preponderance of European and world opinion. But solutions must be found, notwithstanding what happened before or any smoldering resentment over US arrogance and hubris.

But the realpolitik must also take account of sensitivities, particularly the groundswell of opinion in Ireland against the war.

Over the course of the weekend, it was the President Mary McAleese rather than Mr Ahern who seemed to articulate with most conviction the concerns of the Irish people. She told the President that there was a deep disquiet about the war in Iraq among people in Ireland and the EU.

She also spoke of a “disconnect” between the political classes and those they served.

IN CONTRAST, the Taoiseach almost gave the impression that he was tired of being asked to raise criticisms. In all his public utterances, he said he had already raised the issues on St Patrick’s Day and at the G8 summit. But the critical remarks seemed to be confined to the treatment of prisoners in Iraq and in Guantanamo Bay and not to the wider disquiet over the war to which President McAleese had averred.

While Iraq dominated the summit, the seven declarations that emerged were substantive and significant, on trade, on combating HIV and AIDS, on preventing the proliferation of WMD, on counter-terrorism, on the wider Middle East situation.

President Bush himself, during the course of an assured press conference afterwards, seemed unperturbed by his unpopularity in Europe or new poll findings in the US that show a majority saying the invasion of Iraq was wrong. “The first polls I am concerned about are the ones that are taking place in November of this year,” he said.

A quick scan of the US media yesterday gave little indication of the summit’s location in Ireland providing an electoral boost for the President. Most coverage centred on the Iraqi situation and the next leg of the President’s trip, the NATO summit in Turkey.

There was acknowledgment by the President of the wrongs of Abu Ghraib.

“I am sick of what happened inside that prison,” Mr Bush said at the press conference. “The action of the troops did not reflect what we think.”

But almost in the same breath, the President made a pointed reference to the rape rooms and mass graves of Saddam Hussein’s period in control, saying he could not remember any international investigations being called then.

“Saddam Hussein deceived. He did not let inspectors do their job. I happen to believe that when you say something, you better mean it.”

That bit of Texan hard-chaw showed that this American administration has not been humbled by the experience in Iraq, is still as insistent that it was right then and is still right now, even thought it now seems to be belatedly embracing a multilateralist approach.