'Ireland will stand by its allies' - Taoiseach responds to criticism that assessing Russian ambass.

[OnDoutside]

'Ireland will stand by its allies' - Taoiseach responds to criticism that assessing Russian ambassadors is 'unfriendly action'

Ireland is standing by our EU allies by embarking on a detailed security assessment of unauthorised Russian agents here, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said.



Russian Ambassador to Ireland Yury Filatov warned that any effort to expel diplomats would be seen as an "unfriendly action" but Taoiseach Varadkar said Ireland must stand by our EU allies as the fallout from the nerve agent attack in England continues.
Speaking in Brussels, Mr Varadkar said: "We’re part of a European Union which has 28 member states in it. "Other member states are sometimes subject to attack; we saw a terrible attack today in France and last week an attempted assassination using a chemical agent occurred in England.

"Part of the European Union and part of European solidarity is the 28 of us standing together; so if an unfriendly act is perpetrated on one European country; other European countries will stand together and stand by our allies and that’s what we would expect for us and it’s what we will do for other countries."

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"What we will now consider in the coming days is to whether we want to take individual action relating to Russian diplomats in Ireland, bearing in mind that what the UK did was to expel 23 diplomats who they believed, were not actually diplomats, were agents," he said. "So we would have to do a security assessment just like they did before that, we are not going to randomly expel people who are genuine diplomats. "A security assessment will be done. The minister for Foreign Affairs Tanaiste (Simon Coveney) and I already spoke about this, in the coming days so we will make that decision I would say the early part of next week."

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Foreign affairs minister Simon Coveney outlined the next steps for the Government. "The UK is Ireland’s closest neighbour and friend and we are in complete solidarity with the British government as they deal with the circumstances and consequences of this appalling attack," Mr Coveney said. "Ireland shares the UK and European Council assessment that it is highly likely that the Russian Federation is responsible and that there is no plausible alternative explanation. The use of chemical weapons in any circumstances is completely unacceptable.

more : https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/politics/ireland-will-stand-by-its-allies-taoiseach-responds-to-criticism-that-assessing-russian-ambassadors-is-unfriendly-action-36735761.html