Government must explain 'secret' Treaties and come clean on agreements with the US on military affai

We can no longer accept the word of Government ministers in relation to dealings with the United States on sensitive defence matters because of the calculated fudge and misrepresentations that have been deployed over Shannon. Now that the Government has been caught secretly entering into two Treaties with America which were not disclosed to the Dáil, as required by the Constitution, we have reason to be even more skeptical over what is going on.

First over this Constitutional issue of not laying the treaties before the Dáil. It is true that the Article of the Constitution (Article 29.5) dealing with international agreements, while requiring that they be paid before Dáil Éireann, goes on to state: "This section shall not apply to agreements or conventions or a technical and administrative nature".

One of the treaties at issue – "Acquisition and Cross Servicing Agreement" – might be regarded as of a technical and administrative nature and appears to relate to the operation of Irish troops in Kosovo. But the purpose of the agreement seems far broader than peacekeeping in Kosovo, for its preamble states both parties as "desiring to further the interoperability, readiness and effectiveness of their respective military forces through increased logistic cooperation".

If the sole point of the agreement was to deal with liaisons between Irish and US or NATO forces in Kosovo, the point arises, why is this not stated explicitly in the agreement? Why is the agreement couched in such a way as to leave it open for the agreement to extend to a vast range of logistic cooperation, far beyond Kosovo? Furthermore the Agreement is to apply for a period of ten years and is renewable for a further ten years.

It is not or should not be acceptable that an agreement with such an open remit should be concluded in secret and then retained in secret without compliance with the apparent constitutional requirement to place it before the Dáil.

The other one, "Agreement between the government of the United States or America and the Government of Ireland concerning Security Measures for the Protection of Classified Military Information" is of a different order. Although the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dermot Ahern, has stated this too is a technical agreement, at least on the face of it is goes far beyond technical and administrative matters.

The agreement provides for a new layer of secrecy here, a new arrangement for keeping the sovereign people of Ireland unaware of what is supposedly being done and agreed to in their name. It gives the United States a right to determine who in Ireland may be in receipt of this classified information, which can be of documentary, electronic or image form. It lays down criteria for determining which personnel in the Irish State may see material and what character traits they must possess.

This is not a technical or administrative matter. Clearly it should have been placed before the Dáil and, thereby, disclosed to the public.

It is also obvious that this Agreement could well apply to what is going on in Shannon and, possibly, at Baldonnell as well, whereby secret US operations are conducted through Shannon (and perhaps, Baldonnell), possibly in breach of humanitarian international law. We are not saying the agreement does provide for this, for we don't know, merely that it could apply to this.

It really is not good enough that our foreign relations are being conducted in this clandestine way: agreements/treaties being entered into that we are not told about and arrangements being made which are kept secret.

The ministerial response to the question – why are Irish security personnel not boarding US aircraft at Shannon to assure themselves that Shannon and Irish airspace are not being used for illegal purposes – is farcical: that we accept US assurances on their face value. We now know CIA planes that have come through Shannon have been used for the kidnapping of suspects and their transportation to countries where torture is practiced routinely. In any other similar situation would Irish security forces not refuse to accept assurances at face value, so why should they be required to do so here? Is it because by doing so Irish security personnel would thereby be in receipt of classified information covered by this Agreement?

The Dáil returns from its six week Christmas break on 25 January. Were it to fail to demand answers about these recently disclosed agreements – because of the assiduousness of the excellent Michael D Higgins TD – then we might be entitled to wonder why the Dáil does not remain on holiday permanently.

Vincent Browne