Mr. Speaker, this evening, as in October, the member for Vancouver Quadra wants once again to discuss international law in the House.
That is fine, but let us never forget that international law must, first and foremost, serve peace. We are reminded of that in the preamble of the UN charter, which includes its most important provisions.
Indeed, we can always claim and argue that international common law now authorizes humanitarian types of interventions, interventions that are different from 19th century humanitarian interventions, which were made for eminently political reasons and far less humanitarian ones.
But I do believe that a practice has developed that would now allow states to take an action such as the one being contemplated for Kosovo, or that was contemplated under other circumstances. That action could be based on international law, so as to avoid the issue of the legality of such an intervention without the security council's formal and express authorization.
But still, I am urging the parliamentary secretary to act as a messenger to the Minister of Foreign Affairs. I told him this afternoon, when the standing committee met, that, in spite of the possibility of invoking humanitarian international law, if the UN is to maintain its credibility and its legitimacy in this intervention in Kosovo, the security council must, if not the UN general assembly, be involved. The UN must have an opportunity to approve the intervention by soldiers from various national contingents on behalf of NATO.