Mr. Speaker, it was on March 20 at the outbreak of the United States-led invasion of Iraq that I asked a question of the Prime Minister. I pointed out that federal New Democrats, our leader Jack Layton and New Democrats across the country believed that the war was both illegal and immoral.
I called on the Prime Minister at that time to, if he was not prepared to condemn the war, at the very least agree that the use of depleted uranium and cluster bombs would be inhumane and illegal. I called on the Prime Minister to ask both George Bush and Tony Blair not to use these weapons, which have already taken a terrible toll on innocent human lives in Iraq and elsewhere.
I personally witnessed the horrors of depleted uranium when I visited a hospital in Basra in the south of Iraq and met with a doctor there who showed me photographs of the children who had been born with massive congenital defects as a result of depleted uranium. There has been a huge increase in the number of children born with congenital defects in the Basra area as a result of depleted uranium. As well, we know that cluster bombs have been used already to devastating effects in Kosovo, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
The response of the Minister of Foreign Affairs was to say that the government was not going to suggest to the Americans that there was any problem at all in the use of cluster bombs or depleted uranium. The Minister of Foreign Affairs also said he was quite confident that the Americans would conduct themselves in accordance with the rules of humanitarian war.
The evidence is now clear. There is a humanitarian disaster unfolding in Iraq as a result of the presence of cluster bombs and unexploded anti-personnel mines and anti-tank mines. According to a report prepared by the humanitarian operations centre based in Kuwait and staffed by military personnel from the U.S., Britain and Kuwait, its intelligence assessment shows that there is a grave danger of unexploded weapons. There are literally thousands of these unexploded weapons, which pose a grave threat to innocent civilians, particularly those in built up areas such as Baghdad and Basra. Already civilians have been killed, including a number of children.
I am calling on the Canadian government to speak out and to once again call for the abolition of these cluster bombs and to call for the banning of the use of depleted uranium, and to call as well for the freeing of Dr. Huda Ammash, a respected Iraqi environmental biologist who has been held by the United States. So far we have no information on her whereabouts.
In closing, I as well want to urge the government to call upon the United States and the United Kingdom to grant access to POWs to the Red Cross. So far some 3,000 Iraqis, a number of them civilians, have been gagged, bound, hooded and beaten at U.S. camps close to the Baghdad airport. The Red Cross has asked for access to these camps, but its request has been denied.
It is up to the Government of Canada to speak out strongly for the respect of international law, to call for an end to the use of cluster bombs and depleted uranium, and to contribute as much as possible to the clearing of these weapons that have such a devastating impact on innocent civilians in Iraq and elsewhere.