Madam Speaker, I am privileged to follow the member for Edmonton Southwest. I would like to congratulate him on a very sensitive and wise analysis of the situation that is before us tonight.
I would like to add one additional point that has been indirectly referred to. The notion that there could be a nuclear capability in Iraq is probably the single most important facet of this whole notion of the world being terrorized in an unconventional sense.
It seems to be that the traditional power that is associated with diplomacy is where nations of good faith have sat down together and discussed the terms and conditions that would bring them to a peace that would be in their nation's interest and in the interest of the nations of the world.
This is skewed in very profound ways. If a leader of the nature of Saddam Hussein were to have a nuclear capability, it would be destabilizing to the point where there would be no balance in the area, but it would be the utilization of terror and international terrorism. Just the threat that he would have that capacity would change the whole way and manner that we sit down and negotiate differences. To think that possibility could be in the hands of a Saddam Hussein is, I believe, what drives the United States to the degree of concern that it has, that the world could be held hostage by a single nation unlike any other nation in the recent past.
The Indian-Pakistani situation over Kashmir has brought saner minds to bear on the situation. The notion of the level of annihilation that would be invoked on each of those nations has brought them to the point where they have backed away with the support of the international community. However that would not be the case if Iraq were to acquire, indeed if it has not already, that nuclear capability. It would destabilize the area. We simply must bring every manner of intervention that we have to bear on that possibility.
Traditionally we have done that through the United Nations, through article 24, which was given the responsibility for the maintenance of peace and security, and is defined in terms of collective responsibility which was discharged to the authority of the Security Council. This is what gives a decision to use force its legitimacy. When we decided, incidentally, to use that force against Iraqi aggression in 1991, the international community, through the Security Council, was the legitimization for that action.
The substance of the role that we have played so far has been to bring a multilateral solution, through the United Nations, to bear on the situation with respect to Iraq. I believe, having listened to the three evening debates, that still is the correct course.
I can only add one constructive piece of advise as a result of everything that has been said. Inflicting harm on innocent Iraqi people has to be considered. As it has been suggested, there will be a huge rebuilding program, and still remains without a war, required in Iraq as it is in Afghanistan. If we wish to replace the terrorization by the administration of Saddam Hussein with a regime that is guided by human rights, natural justice and rule of law, then we have a huge job to do.
What has happened to the innocent Iraqi citizens is a result of the refusal of the regime that terrorizes Iraq to allow food in and by it not coming to agreement with the resolutions that would open the door to the kind of aid that would go into Iraq to start to rebuild and work toward these democratic institutions. None of these things can happen until there is an agreement that opens the doors to the inspections that were called for under earlier Security Council resolutions of the United Nations.
My take on the situation is that we must support the United States in gaining unequivocal access to inspections within Iraq. We should advise that there is the capacity to be very selective should there be any compromising on the part of Iraq with respect to allowing those sites to be inspected. If they do not allow the inspections then the full military might of a multilateral force would be brought to bear on those sites. That would be a judicious use of the absolute capability, which is undeniable, of not only the United States but the free nations of the world that would join it.
I say that just as one additional approach to preciseness because it seems to me that people are alarmed at the ad hoc nature of intelligence gathering and what it tells us we should do or where we are with respect to Saddam Hussein. However, the one thing that is quite clear in everyone's mind is that his regime must not be allowed to advance any further in terms of biological weapons and weapons of mass destruction and the ability for him to change the conventional negotiations that we have enjoyed through the United Nations and through responsible state to state agreements.
It is with respect to being more precise, in the spirit that the previous speaker has spoken so eloquently, that if I were advising the President of the United States--and we did have a similar debate earlier if the House recalls when we were advising our Prime Minister what to tell the president when he was going to see him just prior to the Afghanistan initiative--I would, with great humility, tell him to be very precise, at least at the beginning, with the wording of the Security Council resolution, that we would support the United States in gaining that preciseness, and that, in terms of military operations, we should be very tactically correct and exact in order not to further harm the innocent Iraqi civilian population and lose the credibility of the international community. When we take action and we take it together, we take it with the strength of our convictions, our commitment to democracy and the values of our countries to allow the Iraqi people the freedom that would make them a part of the family of nations.
However, in order to do that we must be very careful in carrying out the mission that we have in terms of the international community and our leadership within it.