Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak in the debate on Bosnia and Canada's role in this important geopolitical problem.
There have been four years of brutal war. Two million people have been displaced. Over 200,000 people have been killed. Now, thankfully, there is the Dayton peace plan. It is a welcome initiative. However, there is something we must understand: it is a fragile peace plan and it is only the beginning. The international community must realize that the Dayton peace plan gives the world
an opportunity to provide long lasting peace in Bosnia; however, it is not the end of the situation.
In the long term, history tells us that peace cannot be enforced at the end of an assault rifle. It has to come from peace building initiatives from people on the ground. Any time there is a civil war that tears apart a country, as the conflict in Bosnia has done, the seeds of ethnic discontent, hatred, and future wars will be there. The only way to combat that is for us to contribute to peace building initiatives for the disparate ethnic groups in that land.
Let us look at the scenario that now faces us. The 12-month timeline that has been set up by the supreme allied command is a fantasy. The people of that region will be there for a longer period. We have to ensure that we will not be engaged in a Cyprus in the middle of Europe. We have to understand that the Bosnian Serb population is very tenuous, with Radovan Karadzic and General Mladic saying they will make certain parts of the former Yugoslavia bleed, namely Sarajevo. They are an element that has to be neutralized.
The Muslim-Croat alliance that exists now is tenuous at best. Many people tend to forget that two years ago these two groups were fighting a bloody war within Bosnia. Much has to be done to mend fences there. The Bosnian federation, as it now exists, with two federations under the umbrella of one country, is also tenuous. It will fracture. Whether it fractures into two areas or three, with a Croat-Bosnian-Muslim and a Bosnian Serbian group or with the Croats and Muslims divided into two groups, is yet to be seen. In my estimation, Bosnia will fracture into at least two or three groups. It is important for us to ensure that the fracturing is accomplished through diplomacy and not at the end of an assault rifle.
There is much that has to be done, and IFOR gives us the opportunity. Troops need to be deployed, but they do not have to be Canadian troops. I believe there is a way around this situation. The European Union has a force of 50,000 troops that has never been tried. That force is well armed and well equipped. The European force can use Bosnia as a teething ground under the existing NATO command structures. A lot could be learned from this, which could be used in future peace building initiatives.
Canada has done its part. Our armed forces have done an admirable job in the former Yugoslavia. Our troops need a rest. They need to re-equip and take a bit of a break.
Bosnia will secede. As I said before, we want to ensure that it secedes peacefully.
I believe the effective contribution Canada can make, rather than sending over troops, is to ensure that the peace building initiatives that take place on the ground continue. We can contribute engineers for the rebuilding of infrastructure: hospitals, roads, bridges and the like. We can also utilize NGOs and civilian groups to contribute to the peace building and peace bridging that must happen with the civilian population in that region. This is something we are good at and something we can contribute in the peace building process in the former Yugoslavia without contributing troops.
Economic prosperity in any war situation is absolutely fundamental for the peace building process. Just because we are enforcing a peace with an international protection force now does not mean to say there will be peace in the future. Contributing to the infrastructure development and developing economies so the people in the area can stand on their own two feet is absolutely fundamental for peace building.
One of the things we can do to neutralize Radovan Karadzic and General Mladic is to take away their power base. The people in Sarajevo are scared, the Bosnian Serbs in particular. If we can contribute to making sure they will be secure in their environment, they will not provide a fertile ground for General Mladic and Mr. Karadzic to put a flame into the very volatile situation that is Bosnia as we know it.
I would also suggest that we continue with the arms embargo, and I would continue with the demilitarization process that has to occur in the former Yugoslavia, a very difficult situation to pursue.
I would say that the involvement of the European force is something that is long overdue, for the European community abrogated their responsibility in the first place in the former Yugoslavia. When they were given the mandate to try to defuse the situation, defuse the precursors to conflict that were there, they turned their back and stuck their head in the sand. It is high time they contributed to this initiative, contributed to IFOR through using the European force that is there.
Our contribution as a country to ensure that our commitment to European security is there and ensure our allies in NATO realize we are also committed to security in Europe can be the involvement of our military through engineers, not combat troops, and can be the involvement of our civilian population NGOs through peace building initiatives on the ground. All we need to do is look at the Middle East to show that peace building must be done along economic lines as well.
On a broader scale, I would ask our Minister of Foreign Affairs to work with our Minister of National Defence at developing a long lasting, far-reaching Canadian foreign policy on how to prevent these conflicts from occurring in the first place. That involves identifying the precursors to conflict, listing those, and working
with international organizations to ensure there will be a predictable, identifiable and concrete response to the precursors to conflict.
This conflict in the former Yugoslavia and many others around the world were entirely preventable. The writing on the wall in the former Yugoslavia was there in 1987, yet the world community chose to ignore it. If we had addressed that conflict then, we would not have seen the hundreds of thousands of people killed, the millions of people displaced and the profound human tragedy that none of us in this room can possibly comprehend.
We as a country can take a leadership role as one of the few countries in the world that has the international suasive power in the international community to encourage our neighbours to develop the broad peace building, peacemaking and conflict prevention framework that needs to be done.
Apart from using the United Nations, we can also use the international financial institutions as cheap non-military economic levers in conflict prevention, both as a form to dissuade potential groups from engaging in conflict and also to encourage groups to enter a road of peace rather than go down the road of war.
With the debate we have had today-and I thank the hon. members in the House for extending the debate-I hope we can make an effective contribution, not necessarily through our combat troops but towards the peace building initiatives we in Canada are so good at doing.