Mr. Speaker, as one of our colleagues put it, there are no winners in a war. War means untold suffering, the loss of human lives, destruction and devastation on all sides.
As our colleague from Halifax West so eloquently pointed out, most of us are torn apart by the necessity to resort to weapons for a cause we feel is just, while at the same time realizing that it was brought upon by the revolting genocide going on in Kosovo, where every passing day brings sad pictures of massacres of thousands of innocents victims, mostly women and children.
Given its tradition of peace and the fact that pluralism is one of its central policies and values, Canada must play a major role in the search for a solution for Kosovo.
Indeed Canada joined the NATO operation with the central aim of seeking a peaceful resolution of the atrocities in Kosovo and of returning the Kosovars to a normal life in their own homes.
Our central objective here, in this debate, should be to look for this same solution, eventual peace, so that NATO's current operations can be replaced by sustainable peace measures to restore some form of normal life for the Kosovars.
Canada can play an important role in this respect.
It is crucial for us in Canada and for Canada within NATO and the broader international community to maintain an autonomous mind strictly directed toward the establishment of a peaceful solution. Military solutions as much as they may be necessary are never real and complete solutions.
Canada has a lasting tradition as a peace seeker, as a peacemaker, as an initiator of international peacekeeping through the United Nations. Canada must use its undoubted credibility as a peacemaker and peace seeker to play a leadership role in initiating proposals for early peaceful solutions.
As a non-European country, as a traditional honest broker in resolving international conflicts, Canada must follow its own wise counsel and be proactive, if necessary, sometimes even in contradiction with the U.S. and the Pentagon generals whose operation the NATO intervention has increasingly become.
I ask this question. Does the solution pass through Russia and a constructive Russian intervention in the Kosovo issue? If Russia were involved, prospects for settlement would be far less difficult and would certainly be speedier to achieve. Indeed Russia may represent the surest chance of achieving an effective ceasefire and an eventual peace guaranteed by peacekeeping and the resettlement of the Kosovars in their own homes. Russian participation would eliminate a roadblock within the UN. Russia, if it participated, might influence China to take a more positive stance at the UN security council. Canada should take the lead in enlisting Russian participation, inciting Russia to play a key part in bringing Yugoslavia to accept Rambouillet or a similar accord.
One obvious difficulty in establishing a peacekeeping force in Kosovo is the refusal of Yugoslavia to accept a NATO force. If a peacekeeping force were to include a strong Russian presence, it may go a long way to influencing Yugoslavia to accept it. Even if it meant NATO countries contributing to such participation, it would still be a thousand times preferable to the alternative of military operations continuing on a larger scale.
As far as the conduct of NATO's operations is concerned, it is important that Canada maintain enough flexibility and autonomy. While the United States and some European nations support expanding the operations' scope to include ground troops, Canada should stick to it's initial commitment, which was to send in from 600 to 800 military personnel, but only in a peacekeeping capacity and after a formal agreement was reached to put an end to the operations and make sure that the Kosovars can go back home.
I think we all agree that military operations are a last resort, that peaceful solutions must be the central collective goal of all of us. Canada is a nation of peace and freedom. In seeking freedom itself for others it must believe that freedom is best achieved in achieving peace.
This is what we must seek tonight. I would earnestly ask the Minister of Foreign Affairs and my government to do everything possible to enlist the help of the Russians to make a peace settlement possible and to lift the United Nations blockade. I hope that peace happens very soon in Kosovo.