Mr. Speaker, I do not often rise in this House and say with what great disappointment and sadness I am able to express not just my views but primarily the views of our constituents on what we have been hearing on this most sad scenario, the pending war on Iraq.
Permit me to go back to just about four years ago, when we had the war and the bombing in Yugoslavia. We had a debate in this honourable House. I remember rising to my feet at that time to say what a sad moment it was as we were leaving one century, going into the new millennium, and that hopefully we would rid ourselves of war and bring peace, prosperity, health and happiness throughout the globe. I remember that at that time we had visitors from the United States. There was a joint Senate and House of Commons committee. We had with us some guests from the United States, Mr. Robert McNamara, former U.S. defense secretary, and General Lee Butler, retired commander-in-chief of the U.S. defense department. They talked about what happened in Vietnam. They said if they only knew then about what happened back in Vietnam, they obviously would have made different decisions.
Now I would like to fast forward for a moment to what we are faced with here today. It is great that members get up. The former leader of the Alliance Party spoke very eloquently about his position and we just heard from the Conservative Party, but what everybody has failed to understand is why the UN was designed. It was designed to prevent war, not to bring forth resolutions promoting war. What has happened over the past decades, let me say to my colleagues, is that we have weakened the UN because of our own lack of contributions, financial contributions. One of the nations that has failed miserably to pay its bills is the United States of America. Sadly, those are the facts.
I have to go back in history because the past always affects the future. I remember when on Kosovo in 1998 the then NATO secretary general, Mr. Javier Solana, said that “the solution to the problem is not in signing papers, it is in compliance”. I said that I agreed with him. When the United States today insists on compliance, on enforcement, I say yes, they are right, we should be moving in that direction.
But as the former leader of the Alliance said, what a hypocrisy. I too now have to say, what a hypocrisy on behalf of the United States, because let me remind all members of so many resolutions in the past. For example, there was resolution 194 from the General Assembly in 1948 for the right of the return of the refugees to their homeland on the Palestinian issue. Year in and year out, the resolution has been brought forward and ignored. Most recently, there was the resolution on Jenin. Why did we not ask for compliance? Why did we not ask for enforcement? There were the many resolutions on Cyprus for the return of the missing people. There was the resolution asking for the illegal occupation of Cyprus to be resolved. Why are we not asking for compliance? Why are we not asking for enforcement? Why all of a sudden are we so insistent that on resolution 1441 we must have compliance? That is the irony today.
Moreover, as the previous speaker from the Conservative Party said, resolution 1441 had no mention of military action. Now today we have the gang of war: the United States, Great Britain, Spain and Portugal, the big powers of the world. What happens in Spain if there is an uprising in the Basque region and there is bombing and there are murders? Are they going to pass a resolution to say let us send the planes in, let us start bombing? No, I do not think that is the way it should be. It is very sad in times like these, especially when the chief inspector, Mr. Blix, has said repeatedly that we are making progress, that we are further ahead today than we were a month or two ago.
The international community knows it is moving in the right direction. The head of the nuclear society said that we are making progress. My question is, why did we appoint these people in the first place?
Here we have a leader in Saddam Hussein who, as I said about Slobodan Milosevic, I do not support. I would love nothing better than to see him moved away from his power throne so that the people of Iraq can start living peacefully democratically to raise their children, educating their families and creating prosperity.
These are indeed very sad moments, but I know that the moral case for immediate war crumbled when the UN inspectors reported, “No evidence of ongoing nuclear or nuclear related activities in Iraq”. There was no ambiguity in this statement. Yet Colin Powell and all the American representatives chose to put it in one ear and out the other.
Millions and millions of people right across the globe are expressing the same view. Can we all be so wrong? Can Nelson Mandela be so wrong? We all know what Nelson Mandela said. We know what Bishop Desmond Tutu said not too long ago. We know what citizens of the world said. We know what Canadians said Sunday at noon here on Parliament Hill. Give peace a chance. What chance are we asking? We are asking for the inspectors to continue doing their work.
Trying to tie terrorism with Saddam Hussein is wrong. We know that this war has nothing to do with terrorism and everything to do with vested interest; interest in oil for example and so many other interests. However, we do not want to take it in that direction. We want to create and continue supporting the body called the UN. If we start tampering with it, we may weaken it as we are doing right now. The rule of law that we talk about is often discussed here in the House
Mr. Speaker, I neglected to mention that I will be splitting my time with the member for Kitchener Centre.
It is imperative today that we allow these discussions at the UN to continue, that we permit the inspectors to continue doing their work. There were 250,000 people the other day in Montreal sending the same message: we want peace not war.
Should we prepare? Of course we should. Should we always have our guard up? Of course we should. Are we here to fool ourselves and say that nothing will happen again if we dethrone Saddam Hussein? On the contrary, we must always be on guard.
My constituents in Scarborough Centre and other Canadians whom I have spoken to are very concerned. However, if today a precedent is being set by asking for enforcement and compliance of resolution 1441, then it is incumbent upon the United States to lead the way and to lead by example and all the other resolutions that have been there will come forward again in the future. The Middle East issue is a very important issue to world peace. The Cyprus issue is a very important issue to world peace. The Kurd issue is just as important. I was reading the other day an article by Mr. Haroon Siddiqui who writes for the Toronto Star . He talks about the rule of international law. He said:
Iraq has not invaded America. It is not capable of it. It is not threatening to. Nor is it threatening anybody else. The argument that war must be waged to protect Americans from Saddam is simply not credible. Even less so is the attempt to link Iraq to al-Qaeda. If one accepts Bush's logic of invading those who, knowingly or unwittingly, financed, hosted or helped terrorists, then Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan and Qatar should be attacked long before Iraq.
We are not talking innuendo and hearsay. We are dealing with facts. We know what is going on out there. This unjustified effort on behalf of the United States that seems to have blinkers right now is unacceptable.