This article is from page 3 of the 2006-04-11 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 3 JPG
THE Chairman of the Green Party has called for a comprehensive investigation into revelations that Shannon Airport has been used to export military helicopters to Israel.
John Gormley TD said that revelations that a cargo aircraft used to transport Apache helicopters, passed through Shannon in February, called into doubt the position of the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dermot Ahern.
“This matter must be comprehensively investigated by the Joint Oireachtas Committee for Foreign Affairs and if it is established that the Department lied about this, then the Minister for Foreign Affairs will have no option but to resign,” said Mr Gormley.
On Saturday, it was revealed that the cargo plane landed at Shannon Airport and that the Departments of Transport and Foreign Affairs, which are responsible for foreign civilian flights and foreign military flights respectively, initially denied any knowledge. Photographs have now emerged of the controversial plane on the ground at Shannon.
“It is bad enough that Shannon has effectively become a US military airport for the occupation of Iraq. Now that it is implicated in the suppression of the Palestinian people as well, it confirms that this Government’s foreign policy is ad idem with US foreign policy,” he said.
The massive Antonov 124 cargo aircraft landed at Shannon only hours before US President George W. Bush made the first of two refuelling stopovers at the airport, on February 28th last.
The plane, and a second aircraft owned by the same company, parked overnight in a specially constructed high-security corral.
According to the Department of Transport, the original information provided to it by the aircraft operator showed that the flight in question intended to travel from the USA to Israel, via Iceland and to return via Shannon.
“We were informed that the flight landing at Shannon on the return leg would be empty,” said a department spokesperson.
The aircraft, operated by the Volga-Dnepr Group, which has a maintenance base at Shannon, diverted to Shannon so that company engineers there could attend to a technical problem with one of the planes.
“I am not at all surprised by this,” said former Irish Army commandant and well known anti-war campaigner Ed Horgan.
“The Government has been caught out by denying that these flights landed at Shannon. Only when presented with the evidence did they come clean”.