An Irish-American who hopes to be the next US ambassador to Ireland is to sue the publisher of the Irish Voice newspaper, Mr Niall O'Dowd, over claims that he is a supporter of unionism.
The row is one of the opening shots in what is likely to be a hotly contested race for the job of representing the US in Ireland, a post that has grown in significance with the engagement of the US in the peace process.
Irish-American activists believe the only hope of maintaining that engagement is through the appointment of a sufficiently senior figure who is sympathetic to the nationalist cause and has the ear of the Bush administration.
Mr Tom Tracy is a multimillionaire, a prominent member of the Republican Party and a member of the California board of the Ireland Funds. He has been canvassing support for nomination as ambassador by the Bush administration.
Mr Tracy, a committed Catholic and papal knight who made his fortune in selling car parts, has contributed hundreds of thousands of pounds to both the Ireland Funds and Irish causes. He has promised to part-fund a chair in UCC. The university last year gave him an honorary degree.
He was the subject of an attack by Mr O'Dowd in the pages of last week's Irish Voice, one of the two US weekly Irish papers.
Mr Tracy told The Irish Times that he has initiated legal action against Mr O'Dowd, a key figure in attempts to persuade President Clinton to involve himself in the peace process.
But although Mr O'Dowd has been prominently associated with Irish support for Democratic candidates, particularly Ms Hillary Clinton, concerns about Mr Tracy's ambitions extend into Republican ranks.
A leading New York Irish-American Republican activist, Mr Jeffrey Cleary, said he would also try and use his influence against the appointment.
In the article, Mr O'Dowd alleged Mr Tracy would be London's choice for the Dublin job. He claimed he had "provided funding for unionist parties in North America and been a reliable critic of Sinn Fein in the peace process", and warned that Mr Tracy's appointment would be a disaster for the peace process because of his "anti-nationalist" stance.
Mr Tracy said Mr O'Dowd was "clearly worked up at the time" and argued that the article reflected the new reality, with a change in administration, that "he is going to be somewhat left out in the cold".
He denied he had funded the unionist parties, insisting that his only contributions were to Mr David Irvine (PUP) and Mr Billy Hutchinson (PUP), of $300 and $200 respectively.
He also disputed the "anti-nationalist" tag and said he had developed contacts on both sides of the Border in both traditions and from all the major parties.
His involvement with unionists, he said, was a direct result of a suggestion in the early 1990s by the US consul-general in Belfast that as a Catholic Irish-American who did not support Noraid he was in a unique position to reach out to the Protestant community. He had done so successfully, he said.
He denied that he was hostile to nationalism. "I am hostile to any political party that participates in punishment beatings and killings", he said, arguing that his views had been seriously mis-characterised.
He said he was labelled a unionist by a British journalist because he had told him rhetorically: "If you say I am a unionist because I don't think people should be bombed out of their views, then I am a unionist".
He said he was interested in becoming ambassador, largely because of the number of requests he had had from friends in the North to put his name forward.
