EIRE AND THE WEST

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27920, 17 March 1956, Page 9

EIRE AND THE WEST

PARTITION PREVENTS LINK WITH NATO

(Rec. 8 p.m.) WASHINGTON. Mar. 15. The Prime Minister of Eire (Mr John Costello) said today that Eire could not join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation because of the island’s partition. “So the continued British hold on part of the island is a problem whose existence in some degree lessens the strength of the Western defences.” he said in an address at a National Press Club luncheon. Mr Costello, on a 15-day tour of the United States, arrived in Washington yesterday. “Our own special object of foreign policy is the abolition of partition and the establishment of full national unity in the whole of our island territory,” he said. “We believe that partition contradicts the facts of history and geography and spuriously denies the democratic principle. “Partition has created circumstances which do not permit any Irish Government to enter into any military alliances such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.” If this problem was solved, he said, he believed there would “be liberated in aid of Western institutions a fresh and enthusiastic flow of Irish energy.”