Baroness Ashton grilled over CND past and says: 'I am not ashamed'



Britain's new EU foreign policy chief Baroness Ashton defended her past as a campaigner against nuclear weapons in a three-hour grilling by Euro MPs yesterday.



The Labour peer told the Brussels hearing of her membership of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, saying: 'I am not ashamed of what I am, and who I have been.'



The session, to confirm her in the job of High Representative for Foreign Affairs, saw her come under fire from Tory and UKIP MEPs.



Grilled: Baroness Ashton was questioned strenuously today about her past as a campaigner for nuclear disarmament

Lady Ashton was mostly asked about her foreign policy plans and how she would tackle key issues such as the Middle East, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan.



But her role in CND nearly 30 years ago cropped up when Conservative MEP Charles Tannock asked if she was still in favour of unilateral nuclear disarmament.



'The situation then is not relevant now,' she replied. 'Not least because the European Union did not exist in the way it does now.'



She told Mr Tannock: 'You may disagree with what I did but don't try and label what I did in the 1970s as something more than what it was.'

Lady Ashton, 53, joined CND in 1977 and is alleged to have been spied on by the security services.



Later, UKIP MEP Lord Dartmouth claimed that, on the basis of her views at the time, Eastern Europe would still be under Communist rule: 'Your judgment has been hopelessly and demonstrably wrong. Are you the Edith Piaf of the commission - "I regret nothing" - or are you going to recant these views and apologise to the people you misled?'



Lady Ashton responded: 'I have never hidden what I did. When I was a young person I marched because I wanted to abolish nuclear weapons. I never visited Eastern Europe.



'We wanted to see a Europe that was free and here we have it.'



After the hearing Labour MEP Richard Howitt defended the peer.



He said: 'Tired and wholly false allegations about CND and the former Soviet Union were a thinly disguised attempt to associate Cathy Ashton with anti-Russian sentiment in the Parliament, and it fell totally flat.'



Mr Howitt said there had been 'sour grapes' when Lady Ashton was unexpectedly named by EU leaders in November as their choice for the second most senior political job in Brussels.



But the life peer, who will earn £239,000 a year as well as a raft of allowances and perks in her role, suffered another difficult moment when she was forced to admit to gaps in her knowledge.



When asked what she thought of calls for the EU to replace the UK and France in the United Nations Security Council, she replied: 'I don't know.' The issue had 'not even crossed over into my thinking,' she said, adding: 'You've caught me out.'



Lady Ashton is one of 26 EU Commissioners who each face a similar three-hour 'job interview' before MEPs vote to confirm their roles on January 26.

