Mr. Speaker, 50 years ago in late March, Canadian poet Raymond Souster wrote about another distant conflict. It is “almost impossible to think of, to comprehend the words war, bombings and air raid shelters with this afternoon sun glowing, spring-like”.
Today, as we participate in this important debate on Kosovo in the safety of this House and in the security of this country, it still seems almost impossible to think of.
Night after night Canadians and the world community watch in horror as thousands upon thousands of desperate people flee for their lives. They leave behind their homes, their work, their communities and even members of their own family. They bring with them those few possessions they can carry and their anguish.
Our television screens are lit as well by pictures of destruction from air strikes and bombs. Here too, innocent civilians are losing their homes, their neighbourhoods and their lives.
Canadians who came to this country from both sides of the conflict watch the news and search the Internet for signs that their relatives are safe. In communities across Canada families and friends of our men and women of the armed forces watch and worry as the people they love risk their lives on dangerous military missions.
Today our first and last thoughts must be with all of those people whose lives are touched by the tragic events in Kosovo. We are indebted to the service personnel who put their lives at risk and to the aid workers who are helping the refugees in Albania and Macedonia.
While thousands of ethic Albanians flee from Kosovo, Canada with other NATO countries, is bombing Serbia. We are doing this to a country that has not waged war on Canada all without a resolution from the government, a debate on that resolution or a vote by the House of Commons, and without the sanction of the United Nations General Assembly.
How did we get here? How did we get to this terrible place?
For some years now, Yugoslav President Milosevic has been ruthlessly suppressing the rights of former states within Yugoslavia. By March of this year, as Mr. Milosevic spurned all attempts at peace talks, he amassed 40,000 troops in and around Kosovo and began a campaign of brutal ethnic cleansing. The United Nations Security Council failed to act.
At this point all 19 NATO countries agreed to intervene with an air campaign intended to stop the atrocities of Milosevic's forces, push him to withdraw from Kosovo and accept the entry of an international military presence to protect civilians.
For New Democrats the maintenance of peace has always been and remains our highest priority. Any decision to take military action is particularly troubling for us as internationalists seeking a peaceful world order based on respect for human rights.
However, the scale of the human disaster unfolding before the world made it imperative in our view for the international community to act. To sit by and do nothing was simply not an option.
As Tommy Douglas said about World War II:
When a group of lawless men endeavour to destroy the fabric of law and order by which alone human society is possible, then I have a responsibility to discharge.
Our actions are directed against the lawless violations of human rights on a massive scale in Kosovo, not against the people of Serbia. In this conflict, as in all wars, there is a tendency to demonize entire peoples and we must resist that. We must not forget the tragedy suffered by the Serbian people down through history and the threats which they face in the current catastrophe. At the same time we are determined to pursue those guilty of war crimes through the international criminal court.
Not all Canadians support armed intervention. Some activists in the peace movement oppose Canadian intervention in the conflict because of their pacifist convictions or because of different interpretations of the nature of the crisis.
My caucus colleagues and I understand and respect such views. We urge all members of the House to listen carefully and thoughtfully to them as we all struggle to determine the responsible course of action in line with our conscience and our convictions.
Since NATO's air campaign began Canadians have watched events with anguish and dismay. We must now face the reality that the air campaign clearly did not stop the Milosevic atrocities in Kosovo as the NATO leadership led us to believe. In fact the brutal evacuation of Albanian Kosovars from their homeland has increased during the NATO strikes.
Today's debate allows us all to take stock of this grave and difficult situation and to ask ourselves: Where do we go from here?
The government's response has been to ask for patience, to wait and see if the military force alone will force Milosevic's hand.
The government decided to focus only on military action. It decided to ignore political solutions and to forget Canada's internationalist tradition.
Canadians do not want their government to be so mesmerized by military developments that it fails to explore every possible political or diplomatic opening that might end the bombing at the earliest possible opportunity and allow the Kosovar refugees to return home safely.
Today we call on the Canadian government to take the full diplomatic action that Canadians expect of their government; to end the bombing at the earliest possible opportunity that gives the Kosovar refugees the chance to return safely home.
We call on the government to initiate a diplomatic offer to the Milosevic government that if it will stop the ethnic cleansing, if it will stop the atrocities and the killing and agree to come to the negotiating table, then NATO will suspend its bombing.
Since this crisis began there has not been a meeting of the General Assembly of the United Nations. We also call on the Canadian government to call for a special meeting to address the crisis in Kosovo. We need to make every effort to build the capacity of the United Nations to act.
Our first priority must be to seek out every diplomatic and political opportunity that could bring the bombing to an end at the earliest opportunity.
The Milosevic regime may refuse all diplomatic and political overtures. The air campaign may fail to secure an agreement to allow an international force to accompany the Kosovar refugees back to their homes in safety.
Should that be the case, the Canadian government and other members of the international community will no doubt explore what other means can be used to stop the ethnic cleansing, including the use of ground troops. In that instance, I and my New Democratic Party caucus colleagues insist that any decision to use ground troops must be made by members of this House only after a full debate and only on an explicit resolution presented by the government, with a vote to follow.
We say this not to prejudice that important decision, but it is a democratic imperative that the House of Commons be allowed to decide this question affecting the state of international security and the safety of the men and women in our armed forces.
Last week the Minister of National Defence sent out confusing and contradictory signals about the state of planning within NATO for the use of ground troops.
If the government introduces a resolution on sending troops, the mission must be clear. The objectives of the air campaign were imprecise and not achieved. In fact, the humanitarian crisis was worsened as the result of the air strikes.
Today we repeat our call for the government to seek international agreement for the force of ground troops that will accompany the Kosovar refugees back into Kosovo to be under some authority other than NATO. A force organized under the authority of the UN or of the OSCE might have some chance of gaining the acceptance of the Milosevic regime and bring us closer to a political settlement, especially if Russia were to be part of that force. Indeed, securing Russian participation in diplomatic efforts to resolve this crisis is essential.
I am pleased that in debate this afternoon the Prime Minister indicated that he very much agreed with us in that regard. We are asking that the government play a more proactive role in advancing this position.
While the scale of the refugee crisis in Kosovo surprised NATO planners, the generous response of the public to that crisis came as no surprise to Canadians. We were pleased that our government joined with other countries in offering to temporarily evacuate thousands of Kosovars to Canada should that have been necessary and desirable.
On Friday, as we know, that plan was suspended after consultations with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. To remain steadfastly focused on the objective of Kosovars returning safely to their own homeland, we urge the government to continue working closely with the UNHCR. We hope and trust that the government will be dedicating all of the resources it was prepared to put into bringing refugees here to providing relief and support to refugees in Albania and Macedonia.
As we grapple with the Kosovo catastrophe we must learn from it what needs to be accomplished internationally if we are to avoid such crises in the future or handle them in a more effective way.
Some who have opposed Canada's military intervention have rightly pointed out the hypocrisy of NATO's intervention in this case of human rights violation and the very same countries' lack of action in many other cases of gross human rights violations taking place around the world.
One reaction to this hypocrisy is to argue for consistency. If governments did nothing about East Timor or the Kurds, the argument goes, if they stood by during the genocide in Rwanda, then they should do the same in this crisis.
There is another reaction to this hypocrisy, a more hopeful one. This could be a major turning point, where governments that have in the past turned a blind eye to gross human rights violations are now prepared to take bold action to face up to them.
If we are to make the legacy of the Kosovo tragedy a lasting and positive legacy, if we are to make this the beginning of a time when governments take their responsibilities for human rights seriously, then we have a lot of work to do. We must work to improve the capacity of the United Nations to deal with such situations.
Lack of consensus on the security council prevented the UN from taking a lead role in this desperate crisis, but current political differences on the security council were only a part of the problem.
The United Nations, like all of our current international organizations, is based on relations between sovereign states. Even though the UN charter refers to world citizenship, it has difficulties acting to protect the rights of world citizens where conflicts take place within sovereign states. This problem is one of the biggest challenges before the international community and we must deal with it in coming years.
The absence of a role for the UN and OSCE in this crisis left NATO as the only organization capable of taking action. We cannot allow the particular events of this crisis to permit NATO to become the self-appointed policeman of the world. Since the end of the cold war NATO has been very much an alliance in search of a role. That role cannot, in the long term, be as a free agent operating outside of the authority of the United Nations.
The crisis in Kosovo provides the latest proof of the terrible human cost of letting conflicts fester to the point where large scale military action is required to counter a humanitarian disaster.
We have to work at finding new ways of resolving conflicts in a peaceful manner. I want to commend Project Ploughshares, Voices of Women and other peace organizations for their excellent work in this regard.
Many potential civil conflicts could be prevented with progressive, enlightened policies of international economic assistance and co-operation. In this regard, unfortunately, the government has been heading precisely in the wrong direction. It has steadily eroded budgets for overseas development assistance and it continues to support an international economic order of unrestrained markets that pushes the poorest nations further and further to the economic margins. These policies will make civil strife and conflict more rather than less likely in the coming years.
We know there is no quick fix solution to the Kosovo catastrophe. The road to peace will not be smooth. But as we debate this issue let us remember that with every hour that passes more families flee their homes for safety outside Kosovo, more and more men and women sift through the rubble of their homes accidentally destroyed by air strikes, and more Canadians serving overseas experience trauma and risk their lives. For the sake of all these world citizens it is imperative that we explore every possible avenue to resolve the conflict quickly and peaceably.