Mr. Speaker, since the Prime Minister's discussions with President Yeltsin, the Russian army has been relentlessly bombarding Chechen positions and is continuing to bomb civilian populations.
In an effort to have done with the Chechens once and for all, the Russian army is preparing to launch its elite corps in a final assault against Chechnya. We have a hard time understanding how the Prime Minister could say he was confident that the army had already been replaced by the regular Chechen police force, as President Yeltsin had assured him.
The Prime Minister claims he put pressure on his Russian counterpart, but he also said that his first priority was trade. Today we are seeing the results. In addition to undermining Canada's credibility, the government's double talk leads nowhere.