asked the Minister for External Affairs if he has conveyed any views on behalf of the Government to the British Foreign Office concerning the proposed sale of arms by the British Government to South Africa.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Arms to South Africa.
12.
The Government's position regarding the sale of arms to South Africa is sufficiently well-known. It has been stated on numerous occasions both at the United Nations and in replies which I have given to similar questions in Dáil Éireann on the 2nd and 28th July, the 29th October and the 11th November, 1970.
Many nations, a large number of which are European nations, also United Nations members, have made direct representations to the British Foreign Office on this question—on a direct Minister-to-Minister basis. Surely the least that might be expected from our Minister for External Affairs—if his concern is as great as he says it is—is that he also might make such similar representations on a direct basis?
We made our position clear in the United Nations and here. We have conformed with four resolutions of the Security Council. As recently as last October, we supported and her resolution expressing our position in favour of the resolution which called on all States to implement the provisions of the 282 Resolution of 1970. On 3rd December we informed the Secretary-General that we were complying with the provisions of the Security Council resolution and fully supporting it. I do not see that kind of role for me to stick my nose into everybody's business. The British know how we feel about selling arms to South Africa. I do not see a further role to keep pestering about it.
The Minister has spoken to everybody except to Sir Alec Douglas Home, the person directly involved. The Minister has given his views personally to every other Minister at United Nations level but not directly to the British Foreign Secretary.
We have given them at United Nations level. They are members of the United Nations.
The Minister is saying that the British Government are aware of our attitude to the sale of arms to South Africa. The Taoiseach addressed the United Nations and not only made no reference to this question at all but went out of his way to praise the British Government for its services to freedom and democracy. Would it not be a legitimate inference by the British that we attach very little or no importance to the question of the sale of arms to South Africa or, indeed, to Britain's colonial policy in general?
That is completely to misunderstand the Government's position. A spokesman for the Government in the last session of the United Nations repeated our support of the United Nations resolution which we had already supported. In December, we told the Secretary-General that we fully supported the resolution. There is no doubt whatever in the mind of anybody in the United Nations as to how we stand. If the Deputy is proposing that every aspect of national and international policy should have come into the Taoiseach's speech. I do not think it is a reasonable proposal.
If we got a few decent replies we should not have to ask so many supplementaries.
What is a "decent" reply—the one you want?
Would the Minister not agree that there is a very great difference indeed between a routine intervention by a routine delegate in a committee and the solemn statement of the head of the Government on behalf of this country to the United Nations and that, when a matter of this kind is left out of account, the United Nations—and, in particular, in this case, its African members—will conclude that Ireland attaches no importance to this, particularly as the Taoiseach praised Britain's contribution to freedom and democracy at a time when Britain is arranging to sell arms to South Africa which is not regarded as a bastion of freedom in the world?
I would not take it that anybody dealing with Government decisions in the United Nations is doing so in a routine way. I should not like to think that anybody among the United Nations officials felt he was free to do just what he liked. They are representing the Government policy there. In supporting the resolution, and in telling the Secretary-General that we were supporting the resolution, this was a direct instruction from the Government.
You are content to pay perfunctory lip-service to anti-apartheid.
I have just found a list of the offices in other countries with which I would normally deal. Would the Deputies of the Labour Party like me to read them out—the names of offices in all countries—or are they just interested in the British one?
Write a letter to Sir Alec.
There are other Foreign Ministers. You are hypnotised by the presence of our large neighbour. There are other people with whom I deal.