Madam Speaker, the people of Quebec and Canada have agreed to send troops to the former Yugoslavia to keep the peace. Our troops are part of a 23,000 member UN force which has been making commendable efforts for months to restore peace to that European country. With dignity, courage and efficiency, our soldiers have carried out their mandate, a narrow and demanding mandate that they have managed to carry out effectively.
Our troops have saved lives. They have provided medical treatment. They have helped people escape the combat zone.
After many months of hard work, an agreement was finally reached just recently, under which Bosnian Serbs accepted that six safe areas be defined. Sarajevo and Gorazde were among these areas.
We are forced to recognize that the Bosnian Serbs did not live up to their word, as this has been the case all too often over the past few months, and hostilities resumed. The city of Gorazde is currently under Bosnian Serb fire, its unarmed and defenceless population subjected to mortar shelling day in and day out. Blind fire is killing civilians, women and children. Just today, 28 people were killed in the shelling of a hospital.
We are facing a difficult situation. Will we look on helplessly, as brutal force, ill intent and duplicity triumph? Will we keep on worrying about what happens to our troops in the field? On the other hand, should we not help those who are proposing concerted, effective actions to force Bosnian Serbs to abide by the agreements concluded, to stop shelling and remove their guns from around guaranteed safe areas? I think we should. I think that the nations involved in the operations must send a clear message, an ultimatum, to the people who are shelling defenceless people, shelling civilians and children, shelling hospitals.
The ultimatum must be clear and have a short deadline. It seems that is the only language which the soldiers operating under the colours of the Bosnian Serbs understand.
We must issue this ultimatum and if they do not comply, we must, as suggested, strike effectively and rapidly so that the weapons shooting civilians and defenceless people are destroyed and that the troops in the field are no longer subject to the bad faith of the Bosnian Serbs, who as we have seen believe that they do not have to keep their word.
We must issue this ultimatum and use the necessary force if the Bosnian Serbs do not comply, because it is a humanitarian duty. We are witnessing barbaric acts. We are witnessing frightful things. For a long time, we had not seen people in Europe being subjected to mortar fire, random shooting and bombing.
Canadians do not accept violence in their own country. Increasingly, they call for action, and I believe that they have the same attitude to situations of violence abroad directed against defenceless people.
Therefore it is a humanitarian duty to intervene. It also takes the lessons of history into account.
If the League of Nations, a few years prior to 1939, had taken the necessary steps to stop Hitlerian madness in Germany, many millions of people might not have died in World War II.
History teaches us that if we do not do anything to stop massacres, injustice and unspeakable violence against civilians, against defenceless populations-if we witness all these horrible scenes without reacting-we will pay dearly for our inaction several years later. That is also what the news teaches us.
Staggering events are now occurring in Rwanda, Africa. We see people being slaughtered and ask ourselves whether we could have done something in the first hours of the crisis. I think the answer is yes. So I think we should intervene. We have a duty to intervene in the face of growing violence, of the return to Europe of barbarities it had not seen in 50 years.
It is with regret but also with a sense of duty that I think Canada should agree to implement the program proposed by the UN to NATO and, if the ultimatum is rejected by the Bosnian Serbs, to launch the air strikes required to make them live up to their word. In all honesty, I think it is our duty to show solidarity with our fellow human beings.