Mr. Speaker, I thank the House for allowing us to continue the debate this evening.
I would like to express my profound gratitude to the Canadian men and women who serve in our armed forces. They have received a lot of criticism of late, much of it unjustified. They have for many decades conducted themselves professionally, effectively and with bravery. Lest we forget, they have done us all proud. Some from the PPCLI come from my riding of Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca, and I am deeply gratified to those people specifically.
The views I am going to express are those of my own. They are not held by my caucus. Although there is much on which we agree, on the bottom line of whether we should pull out of Bosnia and Hercegovina and Croatia we disagree. I do not think we should and I will give the following explanation.
Let us first understand what our troops are doing there. For over three years under UNPROFOR they have enabled the
UNHCR to provide aid for those people who have nothing. Currently over six million people receive aid that would not have got to them had it not been for the troops of UNPROFOR and for those people who work with the UNHCR.
They diffuse situations on a daily basis which could blow up and cause death. They liaise between belligerents. They involve themselves in prisoner exchanges and their mere presence has prevented hundreds of thousands of people from being killed. Anybody who would like to disagree, who would allow this to occur, I would ask them to put themselves in the shoes of someone living in Srebrenica, Gorazde or Bihac and ask what they would like the international community to do if they were there.
If we were to move out, our other allies would leave and we can be certain there would be carnage, torture and mass killings on a scale which we have not yet seen. It would be an orgy of blood letting. We would see this courtesy of CNN.
Furthermore, we would see an expanded conflict. Not for a minute should we delude ourselves that the Croats will not to start to fight with the Krajina-Serbs. Let us not delude ourselves that the Bosnian Muslims and the Bosnian Serbs will not attack each other. Let us not delude ourselves that the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia would not get involved with the Krajina-Serbs or that Bosnia would not start to attack other people.
Then what will happen, because of our responsibilities under NATO, is we would be dragged into that. We would be dragged into an enlarged conflict which would cost us in terms of men and women and also in terms of dollars. That is exactly what will happen if we pull out and allow this to occur. There is no contingency plan for a pull out right now.
Therefore I propose, with my colleagues, that we put pressure on the belligerents to start keeping the Sarajevo airport open. Let us ensure our peacekeepers will be there to conduct and provide aid through the UNHCR. Let us also work with the United States to put pressure on the EU and the OSCE to find a regional solution to this problem because that is where it lies.
The former Yugoslavia has been called the shame of the west. We have not done what was required through preventive diplomacy to prevent this tragedy. It should be a lesson for those countries that will blow up in the future.
I do not think there will be a diplomatic solution to this problem. That is a tragedy. What will happen is the belligerents, the Serbs, the Croats and the Muslims, will fight it out and then diplomacy will occur. There is no way they want to solve this other than at the end of an assault rifle.
My primary concern is for the civilians who bear the brunt of these civil conflicts time and time again. We must provide a safe zone for those individuals and allow an area that will be protected with force by international troops so that civilians who choose to go there will be protected and have their basic needs met. Tragically what is going to happen is that the belligerents are going to fight. Rather than us actually being those troops, we should work now to remove our troops and have EU troops take our place.