Madam Speaker, one of the greatest tragedies of our time has been the destruction of the dream of world peace by surging ethnic and national conflicts.
Naive as the vision may have been, when the iron curtain collapsed people around the world believed that in a history plagued with war and atrocities mankind would finally be on the path to a peaceful coexistence. Of course that has not proven to be the case.
Eighty years ago the world was plunged into World War I by events which took place in the same unfortunate lands that we are discussing tonight. The firestorm that resulted produced one of the saddest chapters in human history. We must ensure that we do not become entangled in that same web.
The difference today is that this civil war is being played out in real time for millions of television viewers. Almost every day grisly images of mangled children and slaughtered civilians are brought to our screens and in the newspapers. I picked up a copy of the Globe and Mail in which the mayor of Gorazde was reported as saying that Gorazde looked like a slaughterhouse. There were reports of scores of injured and dead lying as they fell amid the debris. An amateur radio operator yesterday was heard saying: ``Wounded people are lying everywhere. The situation is desperate''. Stories of atrocities abound and the term ethnic cleansing, despised by all civilized people since the days of Hitler, has re-entered our vocabulary.
The root cause of this age old conflict is ethnic intolerance and greed. This conflict reaches back into time across the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Turkish Empire and beyond. These are old quarrels being reignited; new battles over old grievances and old hatreds. The fighting has been bitter and indiscriminate.
Two years ago the United Nations dispatched a peacekeeping force into this savage war zone when the Red Cross and other humanitarian agencies were prevented from bringing relief to civilians. For the first time UN forces were deployed during a conflict to ease the plight of innocents. This too was accompanied with television images and the terrible price being paid by the non-combatants: children maimed, orphans abandoned by their care givers, women brutally and systematically raped, marketplaces shelled, and old people lying in twisted heaps. Civilized people could not stand by and let this misery and indiscriminate slaughter continue.
Another article in the paper quoted the Bosnian prime minister in an interview saying: "NATO must take immediate and decisive action to prevent a mass slaughter in Gorazde".
UN peacekeepers have done their best to bring food and medical supplies to these people, to provide some of the very basic things that human beings need to survive. They have done their jobs valiantly and in the face of great adversity. They have been blockaded and besieged. They have been threatened with deadly force, captured and held hostage, terrorized, shot at and shelled. They have performed with exceptional dedication, bringing hope to the victims of this war.
At every turn attempts to find a peaceful settlement have been thwarted by the Serbs. The lies, the deceit and the irresponsible actions of these people are an affront to civilized humanity. Truces have been declared, only to be broken within hours if not minutes. Ceasefires have been agreed to, only to be kept until the military manoeuvres were completed and then violated.
For peacekeeping to function there must be a wish for peace. For peace to be possible there must be some recognition by the combatants that war is a last resort, that the inhuman acts occasioned by war are repugnant, and that all other means must be exhausted before the final option of war is exercised. That does not exist in Bosnia.
We have at least one combatant in the struggle, Serbia, which sees that war as a means to achieve its national objectives. While no one has clean hands in this conflict, perhaps finally the other two protagonists, the Croats and the Muslims, have come to realize that continued arms struggle only brings disaster to their own people and that in the end nothing is really gained. The Serbs on the other hand are prosecuting a war of aggression that aims to subjugate and eliminate the other ethnic groups.
It is understandable in the face of all the horrible facts of this conflict and its capacity to seemingly go on forever that civilized nations are considering more drastic measures to put an end to it and that urgent calls are heard to bring more military force to bear.
The arrogant manner in which the Serbian leadership has conducted themselves, almost as if they hold themselves beyond accountability for their actions, and the utter disdain they obviously have for the United Nations demonstrate clearly their rather primeval attitude, like a bully with a chip on his shoulder. Serbian leaders have dared the UN to take action to stop them.
No matter what our feelings, we must exercise wisdom and restraint. We must consider very carefully where we cross the line between humanitarian relief for the innocent civilians and becoming combatants ourselves. We must not justify the bully's actions by adopting his methods.
The use of air strikes around Sarajevo succeeded because it demonstrated the resolve of the UN to protect safe havens it had created. It was great for the people of that city, but it took the UN down a path of intervention in a civil war that could be dangerous. This was demonstrated when a British Harrier was shot down over Gorazde. The spiral of action and reaction can be very dangerous.
The request before NATO now is to expand the use of air strikes to cover other safe havens. This draws the UN and NATO even further into the web. When did we cross the line, becoming participants in this conflict rather than neutrals? We must ask ourselves whether we are inviting reprisals against our peacekeepers on the ground. At the very least there must be co-ordination between the Canadian forces and NATO to ensure that our troops, Canadian troops, are as safe as possible from reprisals.
Will these actions improve the ability of our troops to deliver aid or impair them? What will our response be if Canadian peacekeepers are attacked and suffer casualties? Is this the right action to take?
Already the Canadian military is facing difficulties in sustaining operations at existing levels. If we agree to these air strikes we will be by extension committing ourselves to expanded troop commitments if the call goes out for them.
Indeed many questions are before the House. Can we, on the other hand, ignore the suffering brought on by the Serbian aggressors against the enclaves and the safe havens? The shelling of the hospitals, the careless endangering of innocent civilians is unacceptable.
The Serbs have shown a blatant disregard for international protest and concerns. They have repeatedly rebuffed the attempts of peace envoys, international delegations and truce negotiators to try to resolve this conflict. Almost at every step United Nations protection forces are hampered in their efforts to provide aid.
Even Russia, which has shown great reluctance to join the international chorus of protest, has angrily condemned recent actions by the Serbs.
I support the actions that we would take in support of these air strikes and I would ask every Canadian tonight at home as they are going to bed thinking of how safe we are in our country to spend a few moments and think about our Canadian peacekeepers who are doing a tremendous job for the entire world and say a few words for them.