Thank you, Paul.
It's...well, I think dialogue with everybody but al-Qaeda. When I was the special envoy there, I said it very clearly; it was talking to everybody except those who had an agenda going beyond the border of Iraq, or now both Iraq and Syria are the agenda. There's a fight with them, an international fight. There are so many resolutions of the Security Council, so many lists. I think that work should be strongly continued. We have to continue this work.
I am talking about orders where they have no choice. As you remember, in 2003, when President Bush decided to invade Iraq and couldn't have a resolution from the Security Council, the way it was done made a huge divide in Iraqi society. And also with the mistakes of, I'm sorry to say, Ambassador Bremer especially, dismissing the army and all institutions, telling them, okay, you have no authority, go to fight against Assad. I remember when I arrived there it was just a huge mess. It was a huge mess, but underground you can see that group of Iraqis, they accepted a political process and their occupation, and orders—there's no way to accept anything—and the opposition; that was the huge problem when I was trying to work on national reconciliation.
I kept telling our friends there—the American ambassador at that time, and as well when I used to be invited also to Washington—that we are doing things; it seems you decided to have war, but there's nothing after the war. This is why you have, or you're not talking....
They were trying. They asked even for my help at that time. I was trying to organize a meeting between Ambassador Khalilzad and Harith al-Dari, the leader of the Association of Muslim Ulama, just developing this kind of dialogue, but there were so many problems it was almost impossible. And also, there was a high level of mistrust with those occupying.
This is why I think that Canada, the way it is in Canada, as well as the Nordic.... The Nordic are very active. I keep receiving a lot of invitations about national reconciliation and work to prepare so many things. I think these groups, all these groups, nobody is talking to, except some Europeans. I know these groups or some intellectuals who are strongly respected by these groups. They were recently received by the European presidency, as well as Norway and Sweden. If you are interested we can give you also the counterpart in the Nordic countries, to understand their experiences and where Canada can be leading, especially working with the Americans and trying.
Paul will remember when I myself agreed in 2009 or 2010 to do some activities, immediately after the election of President Obama, with Ellen Laipson and the Stimson Center in Washington, we did four sessions on Iraq. Two were political—one was on political and one was on security—in Washington, and with the help of Paul we had two here in Parliament in Ottawa, one on federal institutions and one humanitarian and minorities.
I think this kind of work, if it is done by Canada, with the image of Canada, even if now it is changing a little bit, is a niche that can be strongly exploited by diplomacy.