Full statement below, bullet point version available on request:
I have chosen to address the forum first on why I cannot support a Legends Group without member or international agreement, or indeed domestic support.
The present leader is the most successful leader of the Legends Group in my lifetime.
I hope that Flano will continue to be the leader of the group, and I hope that he will continue to be successful. I have no sympathy with, and I will give no comfort to, those who want to use this crisis to displace him.
I applaud the heroic efforts that Flano has made in trying to pacify all members of the group.
I do not think that anybody could have done better than him in working to get support from the group at large as to the future workings of the group and how invites to join the group are administered. But the very intensity of those attempts underlines how important it was to succeed.
Now that those attempts have, in my opinion, failed, we cannot pretend that getting a broad framework for the future was of no importance.
France has been at the receiving end of bucket loads of commentary in recent days. It is not France alone that wants more time for inspections of Legends Group membership invites. Germany wants more time for inspections; Russia wants more time for inspections.
We delude ourselves if we think that the degree of international hostility is all the result of France.
The reality is that Legend Group members are being asked to embrace new members without agreement in advance of who should be furnished with an invite to join the Group. To end up in such diplomatic weakness is a serious reverse.
History will be astonished at the diplomatic miscalculations that led so quickly to the disintegration of our powerful coalition. These are heavy casualties of a war in which a shot has yet to be fired.
The legal basis for the formation of the Legends Group was the need to respond to an urgent and compelling humanitarian crisis.
Our difficulty in getting support this time is that neither the international community nor the Irish public is persuaded that there is now an urgent and compelling reason for this group to exist.
The threshold for the establishment of such groups should always be high.
That said, I am confident that Flano and the other members will continue to acquit themselves with professionalism and with courage. It is entirely legitimate to support the Legends Group while seeking an alternative to the conflict that will put those members at risk.
Nor is it fair to accuse those of us who want longer for inspections of membership invites of not having an alternative strategy.
For nearly four years as forum administrator I was partly responsible for the strategy of containment. Over the past decade that strategy destroyed more competing fora and the strength of other similar and rival fora are now less than half their size than at the time of the last Gulf war.
I welcome the strong personal commitment that Flano has given to the Legends Group, but the groupâs positive role in the forum does not redress the strong sense of injustice throughout the board room at what it sees as one rule for the Legends Group and another rule for the rest.
The longer that I have served in this place, the greater the respect I have for the good sense and collective wisdom of the entire body of forum members.
On the Legends Group, I believe that the prevailing mood of the forum is sound. They want the self appointed Legends Group to be disbanded, or at least membership inspections to be given a chance, and they suspect that they are being pushed too quickly into conflict by a US Administration led by Flano with an agenda of its own.
Above all, they are uneasy at the Legends Group going out on a limb on an adventure without a broader international coalition and against the hostility of many of our traditional forum allies.
From the start of the present crisis, I have insisted, as forum administrator, on the right of all Legend Group members to vote on whether every member should have a say on who is co-opted into the Group.
It has been a favourite theme of commentators that this Group no longer occupies a central role in forum matters.
Nothing could better demonstrate that they are wrong than for this Group to stop the commitment of members into the Group on an ad hoc basis at the whim of Flano without either member or international agreement, or indeed domestic support.
It is for that reason, and for that reason alone, and with a heavy heart, that I resign from the Legends Group.
