Evidence of meeting #4 for National Defence in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was mission.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Christian Schmidt  Parliamentary State Secretary to the German Federal Minister of Defence, As an Individual
Sabine Sparwasser  Chargé d'affaires, Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany

5:15 p.m.

NDP

Dawn Black NDP New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC

I want to thank you for coming and appearing before our committee. I found what you had to say very interesting.

I'm curious about the NGO that you had up in Germany, because I've had the experience with NGOs as well. I'm wondering what area of Afghanistan they're operating in, and is it the same area where the German military is operating, or is it in a different area? And how closely are they integrated? We've had a great deal of debate and discussion here in Canada about the militarization of aid, and concern by our NGOs that this is problematic, and I'm wondering if you've had that same kind of debate in Germany as well.

5:15 p.m.

Parliamentary State Secretary to the German Federal Minister of Defence, As an Individual

Christian Schmidt

Absolutely, we've had this debate. The NGO I'm representing as vice-president has done work in Afghanistan during the Taliban's time from Pakistan and Jalalabad. And now they are in Jalalabad, Kandahar, and Herat. So in several regions of Afghanistan, in the Canadian area and two other areas, the experience.... They are doing a lot of work, giving especially young women the possibility of professional training to enable them to look after themselves, and doing some other work on children's aid issues, including basic medical treatment.

We have good experiences in cooperation, but it's necessary.... In Kunduz, we had one situation where it was said that anybody would be executed for the sexual harassment of a young Afghan lady, and so the easiest people to react against were the representatives of the NGOs there. But it worked out well, because the people informed the PRT very early of the threat, which did not react militarily by shooting around, but tried to talk with the imam in the region, and they worked together.

They also managed the situation when the Danish and Norwegian flags was burned when the cartoon issue ran. We have the Norwegians with us in the region.

5:15 p.m.

NDP

Dawn Black NDP New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC

Oh dear.

5:15 p.m.

Parliamentary State Secretary to the German Federal Minister of Defence, As an Individual

Christian Schmidt

So some de-escalation was worked out. We do not want our NGOs to leave Afghanistan, but sometimes one has to talk.

5:15 p.m.

NDP

Dawn Black NDP New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC

Yes, thank you.

5:20 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Rick Casson

Thank you.

We have just a few minutes.

Mr. Calkins.

5:20 p.m.

Conservative

Blaine Calkins Conservative Wetaskiwin, AB

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Schmidt, for coming before the committee today. It's a pleasure to hear your candour on some of the issues and I appreciated your comments.

I'm just going to ask you a quick question here. I'm sure that most people are encouraged by the recent news that Iran is taking the six powers' incentive package seriously and is apparently willing to consider giving up its atomic weapons program. I'm wondering if you could give us your sense of how this positive development may affect your country's foreign policy goals in that particular region, the region in which your troops are currently deployed.

5:20 p.m.

Parliamentary State Secretary to the German Federal Minister of Defence, As an Individual

Christian Schmidt

Thank you. I think this is one of the most important issues of the year.

We are very active as the EU 3--France, the United Kingdom, and Germany. We started to work on this one and a half or two years ago, and we're very happy that the United States accepted that it's necessary to work together. The six are the Permanent Five plus Germany, and we could manage to get the Chinese and the Russians in the boat, which every day must be reassured. That's a challenge.

I think this would be a step to things that the U.S. declared they would be prepared to talk directly to the Iranian authorities about, and I think this will be a question of the verification of what they are doing. We will not accept if there's only a letter. We have written a lot of letters to Mr. Ahmadinejad, and last week he gave an interview to Der Spiegel, which is the leading German newsmagazine.

If you read this--

5:20 p.m.

Sabine Sparwasser Chargé d'affaires, Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany

It's in English. It's very interesting.

5:20 p.m.

Parliamentary State Secretary to the German Federal Minister of Defence, As an Individual

Christian Schmidt

It's in English? It's available.

It's interesting, because he plays with German history, not only because Chancellor Merkel has said very clearly that we won't accept that what the state president of Iran is asserting, in the sense of wiping Israel from the map, is only a saying. In the 1930s a lot of people had not read what Hitler had written, so we won't have a second time the experience that we did not know what the other wanted to say.

That's very harsh, but I think it was necessary to make clear that we take this seriously. And the key is the U.S. position, because the Europeans alone are not able to settle the conflict.

So we hope that there is a diplomatic approach, as we do not exclude anything that we know the options could deliver. I see that there is a necessity to do everything we can to have a diplomatic solution of the issue. We take this as an offer, not only as a letter--what we have heard now. But the next steps are not very sure.

By the way, Mr. Ahmadinejad plays with Germany in another way. He does not declare whether he will, as the state president, attend the soccer game between Iran and Mexico. They are in the championships. The first game will be in Nuremberg next week.

He has to do a lot in Tehran, and he should work at cooling down those who want to have the nuclear option used in Iran.

5:25 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Rick Casson

Thank you very much. You've all been very cooperative and we've been able to get everything done that we needed to do today.

Thank you for taking the time to come and see us, Mr. Schmidt. It was great to have those candid remarks. We appreciate it very much.

5:25 p.m.

Parliamentary State Secretary to the German Federal Minister of Defence, As an Individual

Christian Schmidt

Thank you very much.

5:25 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Rick Casson

This meeting is adjourned.