Madam Speaker, I would like to speak of peace, not war. I would like to speak of hope, not despair. Indeed, despite the fact that we have talked only of war, of violence and of bombing, I think there is a glimmer of hope. I saw that glimmer, at least I believe it was a glimmer, on an airplane coming from Winnipeg on Friday when I was reading the Winnipeg Free Press .
There was a page on the war in Kosovo which had the usual headlines about bombing, troops moving, feeling the pain of the refugees and so forth. However, what was interesting about this page was the picture at the centre of it. The picture showed a soldier in full uniform bending over a baby. The cutline read: “An Israeli soldier covers a Kosovo refugee baby with an army blanket after it was born in a field hospital in Macedonia”. It was an Israeli soldier.
The page also contained a sidebar story detailing which countries had decided to take Kosovo refugees. One of the countries that had already taken refugees was Turkey. It had taken 7,000 refugees and, as I understand, intends to take more.
I submit that there is a glimmer of hope there. There is a connection between the mention of Turkey taking refugees and the Israeli soldier in the field in Macedonia. Those two countries were the scenes, and some might say the perpetrators, of two of the other great ethnic cleansings of the 20th century. Those are two out of three, the third being the holocaust.
In 1915, Turkey, the former Ottoman Empire, was at war with Russia and the other allied powers because it was on the side of Germany. In an effort to quell an uprising of Armenians who were siding with the Russians it banished some 700,000 Armenians. It transported them forcibly out of their homes, villages and cities and sent them to Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. This occurred at a time when there was no United Nations and when there was no infrastructure to look after such a massive movement of people, many of whom died.
In 1967 there was a six day war against Egypt and the other Arab powers in the region in which the Israelis were in a fight for their lives. After six days, when it was clear the Israelis were winning, they shelled Palestinian villages. I remember the consequence of that. I remember seeing the photographs in the newspapers and seeing the television clips, which were very similar to what we are seeing now. There were hordes of Palestinian refugees crossing bridges into Jordan.
Here is the hope. Remember that it was the former Ottoman Empire that actually perpetrated the expulsion of the Armenians, but Turkey and Israel have deeply drank of the bitterness of those expulsions. Neither country would ever say they were genocides. They would say it was necessary because they were in a state of war. But look at what has happened over the years, at how big a price Israel and Turkey have both paid in bitterness. The whole Middle East destabilized and Lebanon, one of the jewels of the Middle East, was destroyed because of the expulsion of the Palestinians and the conflict that resulted.
When I see that the Israelis are in Macedonia because of the refugees and when I see Turkey putting out a hand to Albanian refugees, I say that is a recognition of the deepness of the bitterness and of the destabilization it causes. It is a recognition and an atonement. It is a beginning where we can hope there will be some forgiveness on the part of the Palestinians of the Israelis, on the part of the Armenians of the Turks and the other way around. So there is hope. I hope that is something we can look forward to coming out of this.
What of Kosovo? What makes it different from what happened in the former Ottoman Empire and in Israel? What is different is how it parallels the other great ethnic cleansing, what happened in Nazi Germany to the Jews. In Germany, as in Kosovo, a government was expelling innocent civilians with force and terror. Germany was not at war with its Jewish population. Kosovo was not at war with the majority of the ethnic Albanians. We admit that it did have guerrilla problems, but it was not at war with one million Kosovars. Yet it was expelling them. The consequence has been the destabilization of the region.
When we talk about legalities we have to remember that countries and groups of countries have always reserved the right to take military action when there is a major destabilization of some region of interest that can lead to further wars. NATO was quite correct to enter into the Kosovo situation because already 400,000 ethnic Albanians had been expelled and there were another 500,000 to go. It had to act.
There certainly was the moral imperative in the humanitarian sense that the regime in Belgrade had no right to expel 90% of the population of Kosovo. Quite apart from that, NATO had to act because we could expect the same destabilization in Kosovo that we saw in the Middle East with the Palestinian refugees.
Once having acted, what is next? It has not unfolded as we would have hoped. Belgrade has not backed down. We have an impasse. The last thing in the world we want to do is to send in Canadian ground forces, or any ground forces for that matter. We must remember to look at the situation from the perspective of the Serbians. All through history it has been a solution of many governments including Britain and the United States. When they have a problem they have ethnically cleansed the region that is the problem. They do not see that they are doing anything that is particularly wrong.
I will give a few examples. In the Boer War the British were in South Africa and they could not quell the Boer farmers. What did they do? They rounded up all the civilians, all the wives and children, and put them into concentration camps. That is how the British solved the Boer War question.
There have been many examples in the past but they belong in the past. The problem right now is that what is wrong in Serbia is that it is repeating the past. We have to convince the people in Serbia that is not the way to do it. They can no longer use the tool of ethnic cleansing.
We must be very careful because this is not necessarily genocide. We know what genocide is. It is what occurred in the Holocaust when the state systematically murdered people. To expel people as is occurring in Kosovo, if we want to make a fine point of it, is exactly the same as what happened with the Ottoman Empire and exactly the same as what happened with the Israelis. They would rightly be offended if we suggested that was a case of genocide.
On the other hand atrocities do occur. Whenever there is a civil war, whenever there is an expulsion of people, atrocities do occur. We have to give the Serbs credit for wanting to preserve what they think is a legitimate ethnic identity based on territory. We are very wrong if we do not give them some opportunities to find a way out, to join the rest of the world, and to appreciate that the tactics they are using are wrong.
If we send in ground troops, every Serb soldier will believe he is fighting for a just cause and will become a martyr. We will be making martyrs out of criminals. That would be the wrong tactic.
What is the solution? I do not know but I can suggest there is a key. I believe that key is Russia. We should be pleading with Russia to intervene to try to persuade the Serbs that there is a way out of the impasse, that there is dignity. I do not know what it is, but I know that we cannot just simply say that these are the five conditions and we will bomb the daylights out of them if they do not agree. I do not think that is the way to do it. I think that is the message coming from the leadership of NATO. I hope it is not the message that is being delivered by this country.
I think the bombing has to stop or at least pause. I support going into Kosovo. There is no doubt we had to do it for the reason of stability in the region and for humanitarian reasons. To keep on bombing is not the answer. Diplomacy is the answer. We should ask the country with the greatest experience in that region that is a great power to intervene on our behalf to try to find a solution, and I believe that is Russia.
