Today's Date:

THE MINISTER - Thank you, very much Brian for welcoming me today in Dublin at the beginning of the Irish presidency of the European Union. Of course, Brian, your task and the task of your country is huge, but you know that you can count at all times on my support and on the support of France. You have mentioned our common approach on the main issues of the coming month. First to make a success on the enlargement. Second, to adopt a good constitution for Europe. Third the objectives set in Lisbon for growth and employment. Fourth the challenge of Europe responsibilities in the world, we discuss all the many crises confronting us from proliferation to terrorism and for the Middle East to the Balkans. We also share the same concerns on multilateralism, United Nations reform, Africa and transatlantic relations. Finally we discuss the future of our bilateral relation. We want to explore new areas such as police cooperation, combating drugs, anti-terrorism. We must do more to bring together our civil societies, business especially, trade between us has doubled in six years and we want to do better still. We also need to exploit our many assets from culture to science, with a first-class scientific cooperation, with Cork chosen as European capital of culture for next year. I have come to Dublin with a message of friendship and confidence and I wish Ireland good luck for her presidency.

THE MINISTER - I think all our countries during our meetings in Brussels, a couple of days ago, all of us were struck by the good atmosphere and the common willingness to try to find solutions and we all think that Europe needs a Constitution and the sooner it will be of course the better. I think the coming weeks are going to be well used in order to have bilateral meetings. Everybody is going to work hard in order to make sure that the positions of our different countries are going to be near. I really do believe that the common ambition of the Europeans should be the common goal. We need a strong Europe and in order to have a strong Europe we need to have a common rule, the Constitution, in order to make sure that Europe is going to stand firm in a very unstable international situation and of course we are all ready to work, all ready to discuss. We've met with Germany and Holland and we are going to meet with our Spanish colleagues and we are going to work on that.

THE MINISTER - Of course, we have a chance and I think that is it important to try hard now. Before the Council in March, we should put all the chances on our side and I think all the countries share the same objectives and it is very important to try very hard and if we can have a good Constitution before the European elections of course that will be very good news for our European countries. I think there is a certain number of difficult questions that we have identified. There is of course the Commission, there is the double majority, we need to really concentrate on these issues without forgetting of course the other different items and I think that the discussions during the next weeks are going to be aimed at trying to find a good solution for these difficult issues. I think it's possible, I think we certainly have a chance to overcome the difficulties and the more we are going to be all aware of the challenges that we have to face, the more we have chances to overcome the difficulties and to find a right solution.

THE MINISTER - I think the quality of the dialogue between Europe and the United States is of course very important. We all have our bilateral meetings and I'm going to be in the United States in New York in a couple of days to meet with Colin Powell. But beside that, I think that Europe as the whole means to have a real strong cooperation with the United States and this is much more needed that never because we are facing global challenges whether we are talking about terrorism, whether we are talking about proliferation, whether we are talking about regional crises. We all see that we have to find together solutions. We have been taking initiatives on Iran, the American are taking initiatives on others issues like North Korea, we need to put together all the information that we have. We need to act in a very concerted way in order to be effective. I think the need today for a global action, global concertation, global dialogue, is stronger than ever. If we want to be efficient, it is the only way to face the global challenges of today.

THE MINISTER - Well, I think they see the world as it is and the same way as we see it. It is a difficult world, it is a dangerous world and in a dangerous world we need to act together. We can see it very clearly in Iraq. We've been discussing during the last days with the Secretary-General of UN, Kofi Annan and I think that the involvement of the UN is a very important fact in trying to reach the political path in Iraq and for this, we need of course the forces of the coalition, we need the Secretary-General of UN and we need all the countries of the region and we need everybody in the international community to help this process. Because it's going to give more legitimacy to this process and at the end of the path, at the end of June, of course we'll still need more international involvement if we want to succeed in Iraq. It is true also for the peace process. We need America to be part of the peace process we need the Europeans to do more for the peace process so I think it's a global effort. No one can do anything by themselves. We need to have a global and collective efforts./.