Hundreds of protesters greeted French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Dublin on Monday, angry after he said Ireland would have to hold another referendum on an EU reform treaty rejected last month, Reuters reported.
Many chanted "No means No" as Sarkozy arrived for talks with Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen.
Sarkozy, whose country holds the six-month rotating EU presidency, has said he wanted to visit Ireland to "listen and understand" the reasons Irish voters rejected the treaty.
"To come to Ireland would be to meddle and not to come would be indifferent," Sarkozy said at a news conference. "What would you, the Irish press, rather? Meddling or indifference?"
The treaty is a replacement for the EU constitution rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005 and the culmination of eight years of diplomatic wrangling but it cannot come into force until it has been ratified by all 27 member states.
"We don't have a miracle solution that can be found at the wave of the wand," Sarkozy said through an interpreter.
"We want the Irish people to feel that their choice has been respected, has been listened to, but we also want people to realise that very shortly, once Italy has done so, 24 countries will have ratified the Lisbon Treaty."
Sarkozy said there was no "turnkey solution to a complex problem" but anti-treaty campaigners insisted that the European Union could not demand a second vote just because it did not like the result of the first one.
"There is no going back on this, unless they don't want to accept the democratic vote, which is absolute tyranny," said 55-year-old protestor Patrick Walsh, wearing a sandwich board bearing a picture of Sarkozy and the words "No and No again".