Mr. Speaker, I am most pleased to be able to take part in this debate. Recently, one of the reasons that my constituents stop to talk to me, even while doing my groceries, has been to tell me “Mrs. Tremblay, we hope that you will not support a war, and that the government will not send our soldiers to Iraq, that the government of the member for Saint-Maurice will do everything within its power to prevent the president of the United States from declaring war”.
It is an issue that is worrying Canadians and Quebeckers, because when you get right down to it, if we were to do a poll, we would see that a large segment of the population would ask us to do everything in our power to ensure, as much as possible, peace in the world.
In this day and age, we have every means at our disposal: well-developed diplomatic structures, means of communication, means to train humans to be more understanding of different cultures and religions, which makes up what we call our civilization. We have so many tools at our disposal now to be able to benefit more from what we are doing right now.
As we speak, the Security Council is probably still meeting. Today, we learned that the United States and Great Britain have utterly rejected the agreement reached between the UN and Iraq on the return of inspectors to that country. Washington asked the negotiator, Mr. Blix, to delay his departure for Iraq.
I am under the impression that the President of the United States is using every possible means to get what he has wanted since the beginning: to go to war. Every time an agreement is reached between Iraq and the UN, he will come up with an additional requirement.
The United States and Great Britain insist that the UN Security Council must adopt a much more strongly worded resolution than the first one before inspectors can travel to Iraq.
The United States has proposed a draft resolution. This draft resolution was submitted to the Security Council and it seems that it really lacks clarity. It provides, among other things:
That the inspectors will have to have access to presidential sites in Iraq.
At first glance, this requirement by the United States to have access to all sites, including presidential sites, does not appear to be too compelling for Iraq. As we know, the Americans have been asking for this from the beginning. The fact that they insist on having access to these sites does not appear, in and of itself, to be an unreasonable demand. However, this requirement was not part of the initial demand that led to the agreements reached in Vienna by the UN and Iraq. This would be a new demand and, if the Security Council agreed to it, negotiations would have to resume between the UN and Iraq. The UN representative would have to go back to Vienna and resume negotiating to try to get Iraq to agree to this new concession.
Another demand that appeared in the last resolution presented to the Security Souncil, the draft resolution presented by the United States, was for inspectors to be accompanied by American soldiers.
This demand by Mr. Bush is completely unacceptable. Unacceptable for Iraq, of course. It is well known that what brought an end to the work of the inspectors in Iraq was the espionage done for the CIA, which damaged the impartial reputation of the inspectors who were in Iraq. To again seek to put them under the control of American soldiers is to doom to failure any work the inspectors might do. I think that this would lack transparency and might plunge us back into the same situation as before, with the new inspectors again working for the CIA. They would be much busier with espionage than with the inspecting they are being asked to do.
The important thing is that inspectors maintain their autonomy, so that they can be under the aegis of the United Nations. They must not represent their country of origin, but be detached from it and put under the protection, as it were, of the United Nations. This seems to meet with the approval of all the various countries.
There is also talk of any failure on the part of Iraq to implement the agreement they have just agreed to and provide full cooperation constituting a new flagrant violation. Such a violation would authorize member states to take all necessary means to restore peace. This wording would help decide whether Iraq was cooperating to their satisfaction and would give carte blanche for an armed intervention, without again involving the UN.
This last point from what we know to be the draft resolution before the Security Council is completely unacceptable to us. This must not be based on a judgment call. My colleague, who spoke before me, stated it very well. We cannot allow the United States to be both judge and jury, responsible for deciding every aspect of everything in order to make it easy for itself to declare war. There must be an organization that is completely independent from the United States to decide if Saddam Hussein has truly violated the agreement, and if it should thrust us into a war that will end up being very long, apparently.
Therefore, the Security Council must be responsible for making this type of call, as to whether or not there really has been a flagrant violation. We know that Mr. Blix, who was the negotiator in Vienna, met with the Security Council today to inform members of the content of the agreement reached with Iraq. He met with them in person, and they discussed the agreement. Following the meeting, he said that he would now begin planning a trip to Iraq. Obviously, however, he would be waiting for the Security Council to rule on whether or not he would be allowed to leave for Iraq.
We know that France, among others, has made a proposal that the Security Council is examining at the present time. We do not know what the details of it are, but we do know that it would do away with the systematic use of force. This is a bit of a guarantee for Canada, because the Prime Minister assures us that he will do nothing without the United Nations. I trust that our Prime Minister will stick to that position, because we have the assurance of France that it will defend its position before the Security Council. I believe that the nature of this stand is reassuring to Canadians.