NDVA Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON NATIONAL DEFENCE AND VETERANS AFFAIRS

COMITÉ PERMANENT DE LA DÉFENSE NATIONALE ET DES ANCIENS COMBATTANTS

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, November 18, 1997

• 0913

[English]

The Co-Chairman (Mr. Bill Graham (Toronto Centre—Rosedale, Lib.)): I'm calling this meeting to order, please. This is a joint meeting of the committee on foreign affairs and international trade and the committee on defence and veterans affairs.

To some extent I'm making this statement for the benefit of the audience, which will be joining us by way of CPAC. You will recall that our two committees were asked by the Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Defence to consider the issue of whether to continue the mandate of our troops presently serving in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Our troops are in a somewhat different position from those of other nations serving in that theatre in that most nations belonging to SFOR, the force governed by NATO, which is presently there, are committed until the end of June of this year, whereas the mandate of our troops ends on December 31 of this year.

Our cabinet will therefore be considering the issue of whether to extend their mandate some time at the end of this month in order to make a decision that would be effective as of December 31 and to enable new troops to replace those that are presently serving in that theatre. We will therefore be having this hearing in order to determine that issue with a debate in these two committees rather than having a debate on the floor of the House.

• 0915

Members of the committee will be aware that eight members of our two committees, four from defence and four from foreign affairs, travelled to Bosnia last week, and we will be reporting to you on that trip. Very briefly, from my own personal view I would make two quick comments.

The first is that I think it's fair to say that we were all extremely impressed by the quality of the troops, the extraordinary complexity of the task they are called upon to perform, and the very professional way in which they are achieving the mandate they have been asked to achieve.

Secondly, we had an opportunity to meet with political leaders while we were there as well as with leaders of SFOR itself, various of the commanding generals, and the political advisers to SFOR. We have come back with the report that is now in your hands, which you can look at and which enables us to have a much better appreciation of the complexity of the political position on the ground. Mr. Bertrand will be making an opening statement about the state of our troops and our trip when I finish.

In terms of procedure, this will be a more complicated hearing than most because we have two committees here. We therefore will have to be careful with the time for questions. What is proposed is that we have this morning to hear witnesses. We have with us this morning Mr. Graham, Professor Cohen, and Barbara Shenstone, who will give us different perceptions of the state of affairs in Bosnia. They will be joined at 11 a.m. by Professor William Schabas from the University of Quebec at Montreal.

Tomorrow afternoon we will have an opportunity to debate this issue and at that time we will have with us officers and representatives from the various departments of defence and foreign affairs to provide answers if there are any questions from members. After that we can then determine whether or not we can report to the House as separate committees as to our conclusions on this matter.

Mr. Bertrand.

[Translation]

The Co-Chairman (Mr. Robert Bertrand (Pontiac—Gatineau—Labelle, Lib.): Thank you very much, Bill. Guests and colleagues, moving beyond what Mr. Graham was saying, everyone knows that we were in Bosnia-Herzegovina just a few days ago. We visited all Canadian military camps there as well as the Aviano flight base.

[English]

On the first leg of our journey we visited Aviano Air Force Base and we had a briefing there. The people there were on the last leg of their mission. As you all know, they all arrived in Canada yesterday. For the second part we went to Velika Kladusa and we were shown what their job was. Throughout our four or five days over there we were visiting different Canadian sites.

I must just say again how much I was impressed by the professionalism of our Canadian forces over there. The first day we were in Velika Kladusa, we had our first mine action awareness briefing. It's amazing what these people have to live with; they are under the constant pressure of looking where they have to set foot every time. If the committee does decide to renew the mandate, I think we can all be extremely confident of the great work our Canadian forces will be doing.

The Co-Chairman (Mr. Bill Graham): Thank you.

I might just draw to the attention of members, if you want to see the type of equipment our troops wear when they're in the Bosnian theatre, that we have a picture of Ms. Jean Augustine, who accompanied us on the trip, in flak jacket, helmet, and carrying a machine gun. It perhaps illustrates the old adage that you can dress them up, but you can't take them out.

• 0920

Some hon. members: Oh, oh.

The Co-Chairman (Mr. Bill Graham): Believe you me, this certainly would indicate to anybody who wanted to mess with our troops that they'd better watch out. Ms. Augustine presents a formidable foe in the picture.

I believe Madam Beaumier wanted to make a quick announcement. No, okay, fine. Sorry, we are misinformed, Madam Beaumier.

We will pass now to the witnesses, starting with Mr. Graham. We suggest that the witnesses speak about ten minutes each, and then we'll make sure we have time for questions from everybody.

I understand some of you have prepared a written statement. Professor Cohen, I saw yours, but maybe you could sort of fly over it a little, and not just read it. Thanks.

Mr. John Graham (Individual Presentation):

[Inaudible—Editor].

The Co-Chairman (Mr. Bill Graham): I have John Graham, but I don't recognize this one.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh.

Mr. John Graham: Well, we'll see how the relationship develops.

Good morning. I'd like to begin by explaining my connection with this issue. I went to Bosnia in March of last year, about five months after Dayton, and after the ceasefire. I had been asked to go by Elections Canada, to work with the OSCE. My job was senior elections officer for Cantons 1 and 10. I was there for about seven months, and again this year for six months on the same job.

My base was Bihac, the centre of what became known as the Bihac pocket during the war. My job was to set up the election process with a team of internationals based in Bihac and in four satellite offices in the region. In fact last year one of my colleagues was my neighbour, Barbara Shenstone.

The elections last year, and also this year, have been described as the most complicated ever supervised by an international organization. In large part this was due to the fact that roughly half of the population of six million are no longer living in their pre-war communities. The process was enormously and sometimes it seemed overwhelmingly challenging.

In Bihac my colleagues and I had one huge advantage. My area of responsibility was almost coterminous with that of the Canadian brigade last year, and of the Canadian battle group this year.

Throughout the country SFOR was the primary source of logistic support, security back-up for the elections. More importantly, they have overall responsibility for maintaining a reasonably stable environment, without which no forward movement, including elections, could take place. They were responsible for the delivery of much of the election material, collection of ballots, security of routes between different ethnic regions along which many voters would be travelling, verifying that polling stations were accessible along mine-free roads, and constant monitoring of the security situation.

In practice this meant that I had weekly, often daily, contacts with the Canadian contingent from platoon commanders to commanding officers. I even had some emergency dental work performed in the back of a truck by a woman army dentist called, inappropriately, Captain Payne.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh.

The Co-Chairman (Mr. Bill Graham): Maybe it was appropriate.

Mr. John Graham: Having the Canadian army as a partner, particularly those units that were present for the critical period of the elections last year and this year, gave us a special problem-solving capacity.

Perhaps I'm not totally objective, but it seemed to me that these units stood out as experienced, solid, professional, and, within some normal parameters of risk, more prepared to improvise a solution than some of their more hidebound colleagues.

Canadian units such as the Princess Patricia's were, as I learned, gallant and very professionally effective in difficult combat situations during the UNPROFOR period.

There are many examples of Canadian military professionalism in difficult situations. I will cite just a few. Several concern the municipality of Velika Kladusa, which I believe a number of you know now. It has special characteristics. The area was, and is, potentially explosive. During the war a Muslin rebel force from this area, led by Fikret Abdic, established a modus vivendi with the Serbs, and joined them in attacking the beleaguered Muslim forces around Bihac.

• 0925

Everything in this area is coloured by this conflict. The fighting among Muslims was more vicious and costly than the battles with the Serbs. If the Bihac Muslins had both Karadic, the Bosnian Serb leader, and Fikret Abdic against a wall, and only one round in their AK-47, it would be Karadic that would still be standing.

Last year the Canadian commander, General Couture, responded immediately when we advised him that OSCE efforts to stop fraud at the ballot counting house in Velika Kladusa were dangerously raising temperatures in this bitterly divided community. Armoured personnel carriers with Van Doos soldiers were deployed very visibly outside the counting house. The message was clear and timely, and violence was avoided.

Ten days earlier, the same Canadian general had taken pre-emptive action to block some highly incendiary plans of a local Bosnian general.

This year, the situation in Velika Kladusa was again highly volatile. Abdic's party defeated the ruling Muslim party in the municipal elections. Small-scale violence was the beginning of what could easily have been a large-scale collision between the triumphalist Abdic supporters and the ruling party, which was reluctant to allow Abdic ballots to succeed where Abdic bullets had failed.

Canadian officers, along with the OSCE and other organizations, played, and continue to play, a critical role in damping down highly abrasive intercommunal tensions.

Another example drawn from the election this year was a situation in the municipality of Drvar. Once Tito's wartime headquarters, before the war Drvar had been 97% Serb. It is now 99% Croat, as I believe many of you who were there would know. The approximately 5,000 newly resident Croat voters expected to lose to about 10,000 former Serbs resident.

For the September elections the tensions ran very high. About 1,400 Serbs decided to vote in person in Drvar, and as a result it became a centre of what I called at the time “crisis tourism.”

This situation placed enormous strain on the Canadian forces in Drvar and on the OSCE, but as usual the cooperation was excellent. We would not have been able to emerge safely and successfully from a very fragile situation without the calm heads and competence of Canadian soldiers under Major Schneiderbanger in Drvar and the battle group commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Grant.

Insofar as a layman can judge, the Canadian troops were seasoned and well prepared. Soldier for soldier they are probably as experienced in peacekeeping or peace-enforcing as any in all the units of the 26 or so armies in Bosnia.

Operating and communicating effectively in a crisis area, within a large, complex, and very mixed multinational military context, demands skills that are best acquired in the field. In addition, the capacity of the Canadian contingent to respond to the special needs of Bosnia improved this year over 1996.

While the numbers increased marginally, the proportion assigned to mobile operational as opposed to support functions increased significantly. This gave them a much-needed versatility. They proved well prepared for the challenges in Muslim Canton 1 and Croat Canton 10. Some of these challenges are fundamental.

Last year we were dealing with local governments with no or little real interest in accommodating a multiparty system, or the other basic conditions of democratic society, including tolerance of dissent, freedom of movement, and the reintegration of people into the communities from which they had been expelled by force. There was no tradition of democracy, and little real interest in democratic norms.

In every case the ruling party saw themselves as representing a special trust to defend territory, religion, culture, and the memories of those who had given their lives in the same sacred cause.

• 0930

With the guns silent for only a few months, this was a powerful point of view. When they said that anyone who is not with us is against us, you did not accept their argument, but you could understand where it was coming from.

This year there have been positive changes, especially in Canton 1. The aggrieved, authoritarian outlook of the ruling party in Canton 10 has not altered very much. But in Canton 1, Bihac Canton, on the surface at least, there are important differences. The ruling party is restraining its rhetoric. Freedom of media expression was enlarged. The opposition had a much greater latitude to function, even though most of them were crushed by the ruling party. The police performed with surprising professionalism throughout the campaign period.

This came about in large part through greater collaboration between international organizations and the local politicians, police and other institutions. Given the abuses of the recent past, this was important progress. Now the implementation of election results in the Canadian sector is moving better than expected.

It would not have been possible without the firm, prudently applied, IFOR/SFOR security framework, provided last year by the Royal Canadian Dragoons, the Van Doos, this year by the PPCLI, the Princess Patricia's, and now the Lord Strathcona's Horse and other units associated with them.

However, to use a worn metaphor, the democratic soil remains stony, and the fragile plant will not survive if the SFOR-enforced security environment is removed prematurely. Work on other essential objectives—economic development, human rights, and the rule of law—would be equally vulnerable without SFOR.

The return of refugees to their former homes is impossible without SFOR. However, there is a major question mark, and that is about the refugees: Will this happen? Will the returns happen on any significant scale, even with SFOR? So far the outlook on this issue is not encouraging.

Clearly, I believe that Canada should renew its commitment to keep Canadian forces in Bosnia.

I would like to conclude with some other, less Bosnia-specific reasons for staying on. We lost important leverage with our principal NATO allies when we withdrew our forces from Europe. A strong professional performance by our forces in a difficult sector of Bosnia should be winning us back some of the many points we lost in 1994. These points affect our credibility when we are debating foreign policy, trade, or other policy issues with our major partners.

If we stay on, how long should it be? To what extent should our policy to remain, or get out, be linked to what the Americans do?

Lurching through short-term commitments, sometimes six months, times dictated by the American election calendar, undermines essential long-term planning and long-term efforts on the ground. It also sends the wrong message to those leaders who still have authoritarian or violent agendas for a post-SFOR period.

But then, for how long? Are we slipping inextricably into a Balkan swamp? Are we looking at another Cyprus? First, I think we should be wary of the Cyprus analogy. For all of their reciprocal hostilities, there is far more movement across Bosnian ethnic boundaries two years after the war than there has been in Cyprus since that crisis erupted.

I would hazard a suggestion that we should be looking at a five-year commitment with options for force reductions and cost savings over that period.

In a policy area where the Americans have been largely impervious to anybody else's ideas, I believe that Canada has had some success in persuading them to look at a more distant horizon. But what happens if for some reason the U.S.A. decides to withdraw? Do we pick up and go home? I would like to think that our policy on this issue is changing. In some circumstances, it would not necessarily mirror that of Washington.

There would, of course, have to be a core commitment of enough other nations to retain a viable deterrent for a stabilization force. The point is that an externally imposed, stable environment will be necessary for another several years. In addition, our investment or contribution to this environment will be considerably less than the cumulative costs to all of us of renewed warfare.

Thank you.

• 0935

The Co-Chairman (Mr. Bill Graham): Thank you, Mr. Graham.

Professor Cohen.

Professor Leonard Cohen (Individual Presentation): Thank you very much for the opportunity to share my thoughts with you about the situation in Bosnia.

I have been asked to fly over my remarks, so I'll have to determine how fast that flight will be. It's always dangerous to speak extemporaneously. It often ends up in a longer contribution.

Let me say biographically that I've been studying this area, the Balkans and Bosnia, for about 30 years, which means I'm a novice at the study of this area. The complexity often befuddles the people who have lived there for hundreds of generations, let alone the outside expert. Let me try to quickly summarize my written remarks to you.

What I tried to emphasize in the submission was a warning against what I called protectorate colonialism; that is, a mode and tone of operation in the Bosnian environment that smacks of the idea that we can easily cobble together forcibly a kind of multicultural village democracy.

I was warning against this idea, which I feel has affected the tone of the whole operation in Bosnia since the negotiation of the Dayton accord. I'll speak a little today about what I mean by this protectorate colonialism.

Let me say at the outset that I think Dayton is a very admirable achievement in the sense of ending the fighting. There's no question about that. Sometimes in this kind of environment you need the kind of bulldozer diplomacy that was initiated at Dayton, which was successful. Although the Dayton document is flawed, it did end the savagery in the area.

This tone and mode of protectorate colonialism that I discuss in my paper is sort of the attitude of the international community. By kind of constantly nurturing through economic and social reconstruction, the presence of a military force, and other means, you can bring together all of the pieces, the ethnic enclaves in Bosnia, into a coherent, cohesive, viable, democratic community rather quickly. I don't believe that is the case.

I've been worried, for example, by the size of the CIA operation in Bosnia, which is one of the largest CIA missions there; the increase of the staff at the American embassy, which has tripled in the last year; the seizure of radio towers that don't necessarily broadcast the kinds of expressions the international community wants in Bosnia; and this attitude of pushing and using sticks to try to achieve a nation and a state.

So in my discussion I'm really warning against national state and nation engineering by the international community.

I've also been worried by what I call the fallacy of electionism, or the free elections trap, the idea that if we keep having elections every few months or every year, although we teach the habits of democracy.... I believe, of course, that electoral democracy is a very necessary element in a pluralist policy, but it's not a sufficient element to create a pluralist polity in Bosnia.

We have to beware of the dangers of exaggerated optimism about holding elections, and what they can obtain. What we've really obtained from these elections last year, the ones that have just been completed on the municipal level and the ones that will take place next year, is very complex. I don't expect we'll make much more progress in actually achieving a pluralist polity in Bosnia for reasons I can develop here in the question period.

That is not say that the OSCE hasn't done a wonderful job, and Canada—Elections Canada—hasn't done a wonderful job. I've seen that first-hand. But we know it takes a long time to develop the habits of pluralist democracy, and holding elections like this isn't necessarily the answer to achieving a viable democracy rather quickly in Bosnia.

That being said—and that's sort of the tone of my paper in the remarks I have submitted to you—I feel that we shouldn't immediately cut and run, and we shouldn't immediately encourage a partition of Bosnia. I think that would be a strategic disaster right now. It would encourage the extremist elements in the country. I believe it would lead to an outbreak of fighting. It would lessen western and international credibility. So I'm not for a precipitous withdrawal from the Bosnian environment.

• 0940

I think Canada should participate in what is coming to replace IFOR and SFOR, which is probably BFOR, the deterrent force. I think we can make a contribution. I'm not sure, since I'm not a military specialist, what the size of that commitment should be, whether it should go from 1,200 to 600, or 1,000, or 300. But I think Canada has done an important job with its military contribution, from UNPROFOR until today, and we should continue to participate in the international force in some way.

I think—and this is the conclusion I reach in the remarks I submitted to you—we have to be very realistic about what we will be able to achieve. We may have to revisit the question of partition. We may even have to assist in nurturing what I call a civilized and peaceful partition and be realistic about what will happen in Bosnia. The scenario I expect is that the three major ethnic enclaves will gradually drift apart toward a closer association or special links with their neighbours; in the case of the Bosnian Croats and the Bosnian Serbs, with Croatia and Serbia Montenegro respectively. In the case of the Muslim enclave perhaps there will be an association with Croatia or even a predominantly Bosnian Muslim or Bosnia state, a mini-state.

These will be national states. They will be not totally homogeneous but predominantly homogeneous, with probably very little tolerance for their small minorities. Hopefully they will drift back together in the early part of the next millennium into some kind of a customs union or confederacy. I don't expect, however, a viable, integral, united Bosnian state to emanate from all the work we have done in all of the attempts at engineering nationhood and statehood.

That's the essence of my submission to you.

There are other elements I'd like to emphasize. I believe it is important that we try to assist in getting some of the big fish, as well as the small fry, to The Hague as far as war criminality is concerned. It is important that we don't emphasize collective retribution but find individual trials for the individuals who have been indicted. This will be a good lesson.

On the other hand, I don't think—and it's really a determination on how we try to pick these people up, with military force or whatever—solving the criminality issue, big fish or small fish, is going to help us build a viable and cohesive Bosnian state. That has to be done by the peoples of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Thank you.

The Co-Chairman (Mr. Robert Bertrand): Thank you very much.

Now we go to Ms. Shenstone.

Ms. Barbara Shenstone (Development Worker, Bosnia-Herzegovina, CARE Canada): Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'll speak to you in English,

[Translation]

but I would be happy to answer your questions in French if you wish.

[English]

I speak to you today from the point of view of a large international NGO by the name of CARE, which has been working in the region of the former Yugoslavia since the height of the war in 1993. The comments therefore, and indeed the plea I hope to make today, are made from the perspective of a relief and development organization that is immersed in the day-to-day problems, as well as the successes of the current fragile peace, in Bosnia.

I have three messages for you today. First, the Dayton agreement is young and requires time, as well as renewed political and military commitment on the part of the international community. Second, SFOR I believe is essential to Dayton. It is not yet time for the troops to go home. Third, SFOR could do even better in Bosnia. With renewed purpose and vigour, SFOR has an essential and important role to play in delivering on the great but as yet unkept promise of the Dayton agreement, and that is the guarantee of safe return for refugees and displaced persons.

As I elaborate briefly on these themes I will of necessity make reference to the activities of CARE. This is not because I want to promote CARE. We are only one of hundreds of NGOs that operate in this region. It's because the views expressed here come directly from the experience of CARE, and I hope they can provide some examples of the issues under debate today.

• 0945

Today CARE works in more than 30 municipalities of Bosnia.

I'll refer to Bosnia and Herzegovina as BiH, which is a bit of a slangy term, but I hope you'll understand.

In both entities and with both sides of the Bosnian federation, CARE is known for its work with minority communities, with individuals from all national identities. We work with the displaced, with returnees, and with those who have stayed behind.

Our national staff, who themselves reflect these different categories, today numbers more than 400 people. In fact, they've done so for about three years. Their work, which is complemented by ten international staff members—among these are seven Canadians—brings them face to face each day with the real on-the-ground implications of the Dayton agreement.

This Dayton agreement is in many ways a flawed agreement, but it is the only agreement we have. The prospect of undoing it or redoing it is simply too horrible and costly to contemplate. Without Dayton, CARE is sure there would be war again, with the possibility of hundreds of thousands more wounded and killed, of commerce and industry reduced to rubble, and of new hatreds and scores to settle later. And I don't even want to go into the implications for regional conflagration.

We should remember, however, that this peace is still very young. Formally, it is two years old; in reality, in terms of life on the ground, however, it is more like a year old, or maybe at a stretch 18 months old. For it is only in this short time that the refugees have begun to come home, that roads have been opened, that goods have appeared in the shops, that services such as electricity, water, and gas have been restored in part in some places, and that some factories and enterprises have been able to start hiring again. If we look only at these developments, the changes in the last 18 months have been dramatic and positive.

Certainly they are felt dramatically in the work of CARE. Before Dayton, as recently as the fall of 1995, my organization operated in an acute humanitarian relief mode. We provided life-saving food and psycho-social and health support to elderly and destitute family victims of war, and we worked under the most severe and dangerous conditions. Only international staff travelled between opposing territories, and then only intermittently and out of urgent necessity. When they did venture to travel, staff rode in armoured cars and were decked out with flak jackets, helmets, the whole kit. Most national staff were very confined in their movements to local neighbourhoods, where they too risked their lives with every move.

The result was that although we implemented similar life-saving projects from five different sub-offices throughout the country, our project managers worked in isolation and until Dayton had never met each other. Since the signing of Dayton, the acute conditions of war have gradually but substantively been removed. With the guns stilled, freedom of movement, especially within each entity, has improved for all Bosnians, and even the most destitute and vulnerable—which is our focus at CARE as a humanitarian organization—are less isolated, more likely to be reached by family and friends, and better able to reach community services, where these exist.

The new, freer conditions have allowed CARE to rethink and redefine its role in Bosnia. Even where the humanitarian challenge does remain—and it does remain in many places—in providing for the elderly and destitute we have been able to adapt our programs to suit the newer, freer conditions, however fragile these are. Communications are easier and more reliable, and we can place far more emphasis on inter-agency referral and co-operation, on training and capacity building with local institutions, and even on in-service training for our own staff.

For the first time in four years CARE staff of different national identities have been able to travel and meet and exchange ideas with colleagues from regions formerly hostile to their own. CARE encourages this movement. For most Bosnians this movement is still not perfectly free. We encourage it among staff, among our beneficiaries, and among partner organizations, for it is a way of encouraging communication and the possibility of reconciliation.

Even more positive, CARE has been able to modify programs away from the provision of relief—food, water, shelter, medicine—to transitional programming that fosters local capacities for self-help, social and physical reconstruction, peaceful problem-solving, and reconciliation. CARE now rebuilds schools, clinics, and houses; helps small local enterprises; supports self-help groups; works with children and teachers; and provides legal and social services information of returnees and displaced. Along with many other organizations we are trying to support and foster the new peace, to strengthen it, and to make it durable.

• 0950

All of these activities take time, and what Bosnia needs I think, most of all, is time. Unfortunately time is one element that the international community, with its need to move to the next crisis, with its desire for quick, cheap, and visible successes, does not have. But time is the great healer. Many of these processes cannot be rushed, especially after a war that has destroyed so effectively the very fabric of the old society. This is a war that displaced 60% of its population and gave new meaning to the words “ethnic conflict”.

The activities of building peace also require a minimum level of security. For now that security is provided by the presence of the international peacekeeping force, SFOR. That security is fundamental to everything else. It underpins every effort at social and political transformation. It is the G-clamp that holds in place for now the as yet fragile structures of Bosnia. The glue that will hold these structures together eventually is, after only 18 months, not set. It hasn't had time to set.

What is the glue? In CARE's experience the glue represents the political and social forces within Bosnia that make and strengthen peace: the establishment of the rule of law; an empowered citizenry able to express its needs and concerns within an active civil society; economic growth; clearly heard voices of tolerance and plurality; and democratic institutions.

Opposite forces, tending to push the country towards conflict and war, are nationalist zealotry, militarism, economic weakness, criminal economies, abuses of civil and human rights, and entrenched political elites, to name just a few.

But such is the fragility of the peace now that the struggle between these forces for peace and forces for war continues to be played out in every dimension of daily life. I could cite new examples every day in the work of CARE: an elderly woman expelled from her flat after 50 years because she's of the wrong ethnic group; and of threats made to staff for simply giving out information to refugees who want to go home.

To let the glue of reconciliation and peace take hold we need this clamp of security provided by SFOR. It's not a permanent clamp. The picture in mind is one of a wooden model you're making; you need the clamps for a while, not forever but for a while. The clamp has held since 1995 and must not be removed just yet.

So my plea to you today is to let the Canadian troops stay in Bosnia. SFOR needs their professionalism, their good example, their even-handed commitment to providing secure conditions upon which all other political and social activities depend.

I think it would be irresponsible to pull the troops out now. I think Canada should stay the course, see this process through, and keep faith in the end with those individuals and groups who really do want to build a new nation founded on social justice and democracy.

I have several other messages. I think SFOR in fact could do even better in the provision of security that underpins Dayton. The single great obstacle to making the Dayton agreement work lies in the as yet unkept great promise that it makes. That is the promise that the people of Bosnia will be able to go home. This is central to Dayton, and it is the great failing of Dayton to date.

Today more than one million people are still displaced or refugees. They cannot go home for a number of reasons, such as housing shortages, bureaucratic and legal obstacles, and obstructive political leadership. But fundamentally they are not secure if they try to go home. They've risked physical attack, political isolation, and economic discrimination.

So what has SFOR to do with this, I hear you thinking. SFOR has a great deal to do, I suggest.

• 0955

First, it must get over its own internal divisions, clarify its mandate and work in concert with the civilian agencies of Dayton to keep in focus the main objective, which is to implement the central promise of Dayton—the right of people to return home. Until the right of return and its corollary, freedom of movement, are tackled head-on, there will be no lasting peace in the Balkans. In fact, with its emphasis on borders and territories and its reluctance to commit itself wholeheartedly to guaranteeing the safety of people moving across them, SFOR is in effect solidifying the partition and separation of the Bosnian people. I suggest that partition for this region is at best a very short-term solution. It is not the answer because it does not address underlying problems and it will doom the prospects for peace in the long run.

The first thing SFOR could do is to grab and arrest those international war criminals. This would be the first step in unblocking the problem of return. Only SFOR can do this, and if we are serious about peace, it must be done.

These war criminals who continue to exercise great political and military influence are spoiling the glue of reconciliation. They continue to ensure that the central promise of return is flouted and mocked. While small in number, with each incident they reinforce the objectives of other nationalist zealots to pursue parallel policies of ethnic exclusivity and dominance. They fuel fear and hate and smother voices of tolerance and moderation. And they undermine the chances of reconciliation, for in the absence of justice the blame for the war continues to lie with entire ethnic groups, rather than with individuals.

Some of these war criminals are also just plain criminals, with mafia-style operations and violent and corrupt styles. They have no reason to favour the rule of law or to calm national zealotry or to facilitate the return of minorities to areas they control. It is essential these war criminals be tackled head-on. They must be removed. They must be surrendered to the war crimes tribunal and be prosecuted, for they are mocking the Dayton agreement and undermining those who really want it to work.

I know there are differences of opinion about the mandate of SFOR as it applies to the task of grabbing war criminals, and there are concerns about political and military risks, but it is clear there are provisions in Dayton for a role of this type for SFOR. In particular, see annexes 1A, VI.3. a and d. In those clauses, SFOR is given responsibility to support the activities of other agencies implementing the peace. I suggest there is a great deal of room for interpretation for this mandate for SFOR.

The question of military casualty risks is also a consideration for any peacekeeping contingent, and it is not one to be taken lightly, especially when public support for any deployment overseas is uncertain. At the same time, we should remember the words of Judge Goldstone, who came here and spoke very eloquently about the war crimes tribunal. The claim that it's too dangerous is fundamentally unacceptable, he said. “Would we accept such an excuse from our own police, whose task it is to keep us safe by arresting dangerous criminals? No, we would not accept such an excuse ... and there is no reason to accept it in the case of Bosnia and Hercegovina.”

CARE stands in a unique position to make this request that SFOR increase its willingness to take proactive measures against war criminals. As a civilian organization that has taken and continues to take significant risks of its own in delivering programs, CARE asks that SFOR do the same—not foolishly and recklessly, but with decision nevertheless. The fact that SFOR has moved against several war criminals already and intervened to shut down a radio station in the lead-up to the election suggests to me that there are contingents of SFOR who can and are willing to take these risks.

Canada can at the very least support and endorse this role for SFOR. If the SFOR mandate needs clarifying, I suggest that Canada use its influence at the highest levels to see that this happens.

Finally, I suggest that SFOR stop talking so much about exit strategies. This in itself is undermining because it encourages those who are uncooperative and obstructionist to adopt a “we can wait it out” attitude. They are encouraged to delay and prevaricate because they know SFOR is uncertain of its future and its purpose.

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Finally, we must keep the faith with Bosnia with the forces of peace, of reconciliation, and of tolerance. To do this, we must stay the course and with SFOR guarantee that the forces of violence are indeed monopolized and out of the hands of criminals and hatemongers. The Dayton accord is all we have. With renewed commitment and purpose, everyone involved, civilians and military, must take on the task of delivering on its promises.

Thank you very much.

The Co-Chairman (Mr. Bill Graham): Thanks, Ms. Shenstone.

I just want to say on behalf of the members who were in Bosnia that at Banja Luka we certainly appreciated the hospitality of CARE Canada. We met many of your workers and I think it's fair to say that we heard from both our police and our military officers who were at that meeting that the work that CARE had done there was highly respected. We certainly recognize that many of your workers have risked their lives in very difficult situations during the course of this to provide humanitarian relief.

Mr. Barbara Shenstone: Thank you very much. Thank you for your support.

The Co-Chairman (Mr. Bill Graham): Along with the work of our armed forces, we're very proud of the work you were able to achieve there along with our other NGOs and representatives of CIDA and others. Thank you.

We go now to Mr. Mills.

Mr. Bob Mills (Red Deer, Ref.): Thank you to our guests for coming. I want to ask questions in three general areas and maybe I'll elaborate a little bit on just what I want. I know the answers aren't very easy and I'm sure everybody around this table has somewhat the same questions.

The first problem we have with this issue is the fact that there is a double message sent to the public. What does the public out there think?

I remember standing in the scrum out here and listening to our then defence minister and our foreign affairs minister say that by December of 1997 we will be out of there, that is 100% guaranteed, and there is absolutely no way we would come back to extend this mission. The public got that message. They then asked the question of how long we have to stay. This is a civil war that has gone on for 1,500 years. Can we really make a difference or are the people there, the parties, just waiting until we leave so that they can carry on with what they've been doing for so many years as a civil war? Can we make a difference?

Going over and observing the elections and being with the people and actually putting a face to this problem has had an enormous emotional effect on me. Now I really understand the three sides of this issue and I can understand why we would want to stay. How long will we have to stay to accomplish that?

In terms of the Canadian public, I've been doing the circuit of service clubs with my set of slides and my Bosnia presentation. We start off with many saying we should just leave; we can't make a difference anyway. By the end I have a straw vote and the vote is kind of 50-50. There's no solution. Should we stay or should we leave? How much does it cost? How long would we have to stay? Can we make a difference?

I think a question that comes up constantly is that since this is in Europe, shouldn't the Europeans be more involved? Yet there's so much baggage there. The Germans have baggage, the Turks have baggage, the Russians have baggage. With the refugees, which was mentioned certainly by all of us, there are a million people sitting in Germany and all of these other countries.

So I guess what I'm asking about is how long we should be there. What is the nature of the commitment in your opinion? Should we arrest the war criminals? Should Europe be more involved? What if we leave and war breaks out? What will that do? Can it expand beyond the borders? I would just like to get you to address those general kinds of issues because I think that's where the Canadian public is at.

Prof. Leonard Cohen: I think that's a very good set of questions, and it's very frustrating when you have to face constituents who have heard members of Parliament or others almost swear on a stack of Bibles that we're going in for a certain segment of time and then we haven't left at the end of that time. Why aren't things better?

Of course it's your job to decide how to present that message to your constituents, but I think you have to explain that in low-intensity conflicts, high-intensity conflicts, and regional conflicts around the globe today, there are simply no easy answers. You place your bets and you take your chances.

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In an environment like Bosnia you can't expect to solve these things overnight. I think we're doing some good. You have to demonstrate that just to speak to that question. This is a profoundly segmented society. It's going to be profoundly segmented for a long time. It may be that we're going to have to watch it move towards more segmentation and some kind of peaceful or velvet-like divorce before it comes back together, and being there can help secure the environment for that divorce.

I'm not for partition. That's not an ideal solution, but under the circumstances, where people feel strongly and are very emotional about the wounds that have been created by the recent fighting, we may have to allow that kind of differentiation. Forcibly trying to keep a clamp on through military means has the tone and style of condescension. What I call this protectorate colonialism just doesn't work in an environment like Bosnia, I believe.

Judge Goldstone might be right in his goals. I'm very sympathetic about the need to pick up the criminals and to resolve those issues, but we have to separate the question of picking up those big fish, as I called them before, from the realistic prospects of Bosnia becoming a coherent democratic state.

I'll just go on for one moment. Next weekend there's going to be an election in the Republika Srpska in the Serbian Republic, and I think the headlines will say that some of the non-nationalists have won. There are more than 40 parties. Mrs. Plavsic of course is doing business with Dayton right now, and we're trying to marginalize the Pale hard-line Serbs that are in eastern Bosnia. We're encouraging the more moderate, soft nationalists in the western part of Bosnia, and we may get good results from that election.

Let's be clear about one thing. For those of us who know the terrain—as I said, we're all novices, but I think I understand the party system that's emerging in the Republic of Serbsca—those soft nationalists are children of the same father. It isn't Mr. Karadzic's own clique, it's Mrs. Plavsic's clique and a lot of small parties. But those soft nationalists are nationalists. They're Serbian patriots. They're going to follow a program that is going to emphasize the segmentation and differentiation of the Republika Srpska.

This is hard to convey. As soon as you start talking about the complexity of Bosnia, sometimes you lose your constituents. The bottom line for Canadians is whether they want their sons and daughters to be involved in a stronger, more robust SFOR that goes out and picks up more little fish and big fish.

I was listening to Barbara's comments. I'm very sympathetic to many of her goals, but I was thinking of Mrs. Albright, my old friend from graduate school, who has done quite well for herself and is a very intelligent woman, who I sympathize with. Mrs. Albright would love to hear what you said. That's the line that's being pushed in Washington: the long haul, get those war criminals, force them together, twist those arms. For all the reasons I have suggested, I am not very sanguine about the prospects of Bosnia built on that kind of clamp. This is a hard message to convey, but that's where I'm coming from.

[Translation]

The Co-Chairman (Mr. Robert Bertrand): Mr. Turp.

Mr. Daniel Turp (Beauharnois—Salaberry, BQ): First, let me say that I greatly appreciated your three statements and, as Chairman, I greatly appreciated the work CARE International carried out in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

My first question deals with—and I don't think you answered the question of my colleague, the Member from Red Deer—with the number of years SFOR or other organizations should spend in Bosnia. In your comments, Mr. Cohen, you spoke of several decades, while Mr. Graham spoke earlier of a period of five years. I would like to know more. In particular, I would like to know whether you see the respective roles of NATO, the UN and the OSCE evolving during this five-year or decades-long period.

My second question is more important and concerns the United States. I would like to know what position the United States is developing, in your view, Mr. Cohen, since you are familiar with the situation and also seem knowledgeable about American foreign policy on the issue.

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You told us of the increasing presence of CIA agents. I would like to know what you think Canada and other countries should do if the United States were to refuse to continue participating in the Bosnia-Herzegovina peace mission.

[English]

Prof. Leonard Cohen: There are a lot of questions here. I will try to address several of them.

Mr. Mills asked whether we can make a difference. I can make a contrast between the seven months I spent in Bosnia last year and the six plus months I spent there this year. We did make a difference. In this Canton 1 area in particular, there was significant improvement. In some respects it was a surprise that there could be so much change in such a relatively short time, given the battle-torn context. So yes, I think there is some pay-off for the investment, and it is a considerable investment.

How long should it go on? I mentioned five years, but that is a fairly arbitrary figure. However, I think that less than that is unrealistic and ignores the history of Bosnia. It ignores the need to allow us time to develop the media. The media has an enormous role in trying to present messages to cross ethnic boundaries. One of the combustible elements in the pre-war situation was the control of the media by specific ethnic groups that were able to propagate hate and very provocative messages.

There is a need for time for some of the very serious wounds to heal, and I think consistent planning and policies, policies that were described by Barbara, need more time to mature. Five years is essential. The work on integration, on economic development and on human rights all requires a framework of stability that can only be provided by SFOR.

Another question was about the Europeans and whether they should take on the responsibility. This takes us back to some of the questions that were looked at in the thirties and to our perspective in the thirties. There is not a total parallel, but there is a bit of a parallel there. This was a major conflagration.

There is another situation in which we had a role and continue to have a role in trying to bring about a more stable environment, but there is the other strategic value in making this investment in having Canadian troops, and that is the points it gains us in the many negotiations we have with our major NATO partners.

We lost a lot of points when we pulled out of Europe in 1994, very serious points at that time. We haven't gotten them all back, but we're getting some of those points back by making this effort, and making this effort as professionally as we are doing in the Bosnian situation.

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The Co-Chairman (Mr. Robert Bertrand): I'll tell you, Professor, that the rules of engagement here, or the mandate, if I may say—perhaps I'd better make it more clear to the witnesses—is that because we have so many members who want to ask questions, we allocate everybody a five-minute period for both questions and answers. If the answers go on for more than five minutes, it then means the questions from the next person don't get on.

There was a specific question to Mr. Cohen about U.S. policy that I think we're all very interested to hear the answer to. So perhaps very quickly your short comment—

Is that all right? Fine. Then maybe Professor Cohen can address the specific answer to Mr. Turp's question.

Ms. Barbara Shenstone: I was going to second Mr. Graham's remarks that five years is the minimum.

I also do appreciate your concern with some kind of great American master plan to create a type of fake state in Bosnia. However, I would remind you that people on the ground in Bosnia really do want to go home. They really do want to be able to go home.

Now, the leaders in Serbia may tell you that they don't, but our experience on the ground, from ordinary people—and it is expressed more broadly in the federation—is that people really do want to go home.

I would remind you, this is Europe, and there is a different conception. In Canada we move all over the country to find work. We think, well, what is their problem? They can go and live somewhere else in Bosnia and make a new life. It's not that easy. This is a society where people have stayed and worked their entire lives where they were. That's what they know, and that's what they believe. In most parts of Europe today people don't just pick up and rush off.

As well, I would suggest to you that the time that is needed is in fact to allow a civil society to happen, basically, to allow an alternative to this great master engineering project. The clamp I referred to is not a clamp of engineering, it is a clamp of security, a clamp that stabilizes it while its own glue sets.

[Translation]

I would say five years is the absolute minimum.

[English]

The Co-Chairman (Mr. Robert Bertrand): Professor Cohen.

Prof. Leonard Cohen: If I had the vision and the prophetic abilities of a Bill Gates, I suppose I would have the answer to your question of how long. I regret to say, it's my opinion that if we visit Bosnia in 2020 or 2050, it won't be a coherent, viable democracy. Although we may have encouraged certain elements that are starting to work together, and I think that's why we should stay, we can't overestimate our ability to do those kinds of things.

I call the democracy we have today, even if we started at 1215 or 1688 or 1689, a work in progress. It takes an awful long time to create that kind of glue for a civil society, and not after the wounds that have occurred in the recent savagery.

So it's very difficult to say how long. This goes back to your frustration...to talk to constituents, because people don't like to hear that. Their taxes today, they need to spend on other things, and I understand that.

I wasn't really talking about a grand plan; I was talking about a kind of tone, a kind of environment. When I was talking about the CIA mission, it's not my business to tell the United States how large their intelligence operation should be.

I was suggesting that the large intelligence operation being developed, the equipment training program to assist the military, which is going now to creating a really Muslim-Croat military that's far stronger than the Serbian military, and one that could unleash itself, should we leave, is creating the unbalance the other way around. They wanted to create a balance, a kind of deterrence structure. Now it's going the other way around. We're having everyone destroy arms under the arms regime system and we're pouring arms in there, which could fuel future aggression by Muslim and Croat politicians who want to consolidate their territory.

So I was worried about those kinds of things—this kind of environment, this kind of attitude.

Along with a lot of other things that I do with my specialization, which is a mile deep and not too wide, I admit, every day I read press releases from the press conferences held by SFOR at the Holiday Inn in Sarajevo. I read what the SFOR and NATO officers are saying as they proceed with this experiment in building this society, and it has the tone that the natives are restless and they have to deal with them. They're restless here, they're doing that there. They have to sort of push them together. They have to deal with the constitutional core.

• 1020

They've worked out some deal between Croatia and the Muslims. They don't like that because it is isn't in the Dayton accord in annex so and so. They have to make sure it's unconstitutional from their point of view. You can't create glue like that. You can't create the effervescence or essence of democratic impulses in a society through this kind of outside engineering. That's what worries me about it.

If Canada is going to be in there in some form until 2000, 2005, or 2010, we shouldn't try to push in that direction, but we should try to be realistic about what we can achieve. That was where I was coming from about U.S. policy. Every country, and in this case it's the superpower to the south, will do what they have to do in terms of their own interests.

By the way, the polls in Bosnia don't show that everyone wants to go home, although a lot of people do. I certainly understand that people want to go back to where their ancestors are buried, where their orchards are and where they grew up, but the international community can't send everyone home and provide their tickets. It's not just about not being the policemen of the world; we just can't provide that.

There were enormous population transfers in this region of the world after World War I—Turks and Greeks and so on. Everyone didn't go home. This was a terrible war, and I certainly abhor what has happened—I don't condone it. But we can't send 1.1 million people home. That's why I was talking about a peaceful divorce until elements develop in the different enclaves that are tolerant of one another and allow people to come home. That will take a longer period of time. We may not be able to engineer it.

The Co-Chairman (Mr. Robert Bertrand): Ms. Beaumier.

Ms. Colleen Beaumier (Brampton West—Mississauga, Lib.): Thank you.

First I'd like to comment on the NATO meeting at the UN with the ambassador to Bosnia. He said one of the things we are able to achieve through SFOR being there is when there's a stockpile of arms SFOR can go in. Why can it do it? It can do it just because it can do it. It doesn't need to go in there armed to the hilt. The SFOR presence in itself gives credibility and power to the peace movement.

I agree with you on the exit strategy. When I was in Bosnia it was like “Pass the salt and pepper and when SFOR leaves we're going to go in to finish off the Bosnians.” So I agree, we should not be talking about an exit strategy.

I'm wondering whether Canadian troops over there experience a bit of distrust. First of all, the Serb Bosnians don't particularly want us there, and I can't help but feel that the Muslims, the Bosnians, must feel a bit of resentment, because at the beginning we said we weren't going to get involved and yet we imposed an arms embargo, which is perhaps even worse than not getting involved.

I don't think you can separate the criminality aspect from the war. Can we really expect to enforce the rule of law while the war criminals are still at large and enjoying the booty of the war? Are there plans to return the land to the displaced refugees? As I understand it, the war criminals have taken over some very lucrative farms from displaced Muslim farmers. Apparently their land is now owned by some of these war criminals.

Mr. John Graham: I'll try to give a shorter answer this time.

First, on the Canadian troops and the Bosnian Serbs, they are now in Muslim and Croat areas, so they are not dealing with the Bosnia Serbs on a day-to-day basis. They did have a Serb responsibility last year, but that has changed.

With both the Croats and the Muslims I would say that because they've been very professional and competent, they have earned respect. They are able to do things that are effective. They have participated in very real ways in lowering temperatures where it's been important to do so. They have prevented violence from taking place. When they use their muscle, as sometimes they must, not by shooting but by appearing and saying something must happen, there is resentment. But in the end, because of the stability that it produces, there is respect. That has gradually, cumulatively been growing.

• 1025

The other issue of separating the war from the criminals and the criminality is an enormous question. I think it's one that, realistically and unfortunately, no one in the foreseeable future is going to be able to totally solve. It's just so much part of a fabric of that society, and it's something that's been there not as a result of this most recent war, but going back well into Bosnian history.

One of the major problems that we, OSCE, know that Barbara and others face is the degree of corruption and the frustrations it produces.

I think I had better stop there.

Ms. Colleen Beaumier: I fully believe that war is unfortunately very beneficial to a few individuals. Unfortunately, our soldiers probably have had to distance themselves from the politicians who sent them there, because I'm not sure that we, as politicians, always make fair decisions. But are we going to arrest these war criminals?

Prof. Leonard Cohen: The big fish are not living a very happy life right now. General Mladic and Mr. Karadzic have to move around a great deal. Of course some of the Croatian war-indicted individuals are now in The Hague.

As I said before, it is important to get them, but I don't think we're going to get them unless there's a special operation launched. That operation will have to probably be some kind of a U.S.-British enterprise. I think it has already been gamed out, and they're ready to try to get them if they can do it without a large casualty count on the international forces side. As I said, I don't think we're going to wake up the next morning and find that Bosnia has changed very much.

There's no natural end point to violence in Bosnia. This is the nature of that kind of society. Over the long haul, I think we're going to see violence and criminality there. The mafias are not going to be busted up on the Croatian side, in the Muslim areas, or in the Serbian areas, simply because of an election next weekend or because war criminals are picked up.

Although it's a different subject to focus on in war, criminality is an important subject. But we're trying to decide, and I think you're trying to decide, whether or not Canadian forces should be deployed, and with what expectation of what they will achieve in the short run. That's why I've been speaking to it from that angle.

The Co-Chairman (Mr. Robert Bertrand): Thank you.

Mr. Price.

Mr. David Price (Compton—Stanstead, PC): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I have two questions. The first one will be to Mr. Graham.

Two weeks ago we had the NATO ambassadors here, but they were a little hesitant to answer the question I'd like to ask of you. How important is the future of NATO in the success of this whole operation?

Mr. John Graham: Well, I really don't feel qualified to give you a good answer to that question.

Mr. David Price: I think all we're looking for is a personal feeling.

Mr. John Graham: I have addressed it a little bit in the statement that I made at the beginning. NATO is certainly on.... Maybe “probation” is too strong a word. This is a testing ground. It's a very crucial testing ground for NATO and the new post-Cold War objectives of NATO, and it is for us as well.

• 1030

In that sense, our engagement in what's happening and what SFOR is doing in Bosnia has that extra importance, because the credibility of NATO is at stake to a significant degree, I suppose. And if we can do it well, and if we can help them succeed.... We have a large area of territory there. We have one of the more sensitive sectors of Bosnia and Herzegovina within the Canadian military sector.

Mr. David Price: Pull out? I mean, that's what—

Mr. John Graham: Again, everybody has been saying until quite recently that if the Americans pull out, that's it and everybody else packs up their bags and leaves.

As I understand it.... And I certainly wasn't there at the meeting. There was a NATO meeting, maybe OSCE-wide, at Sintra in Portugal in the summer, when there was a push on these issues.

I think that the result, though, is that Canada has tried in collaboration with some of its other partners to do two things. One is to lengthen the horizon so that we are not looking at six-month commitments. The second thing is to think about whether we can manage this if, for various political reasons and maybe this awful prospect of body bags if the Americans pull out.... There is, I think, more thought being given to the possibility of an SFOR or DFOR, or whatever it will be called, remaining in place without the Americans. We don't know. It's too early to know whether that's viable. It will depend on whether the French, the Germans, the British, the Russians and enough other people are there to make a viable force.

Mr. David Price: My next question is for Professor Cohen.

In your comments you said that going after the big fish, the real criminals, will not solve all of the problems, and you also said that free elections are limited to what they can attain in achieving a pluralistic liberal democracy. You also mentioned engineered democracy, funnel democracy. If elections and capturing war criminals achieve little, as you say, how do we convince the public that we are going to make a difference and that Canada can really and truly play a role in this?

Prof. Leonard Cohen: I think the cost of pulling out would be greater to Canada in some kind of NATO western response to a new bloodletting and a spillover from a new savagery in Bosnia than the cost of having us go in now with another small force as part of the NATO DFOR and contribute, hopefully, to some kind of peaceful partition or.... I certainly hope the glue can be created.

I've tried to give you what my realistic assessment is. The best possible solution would be for all of the extremists and war criminals to leave the country and for all of the things that Barbara has talked about to take place. I would be perfectly pleased if that happens. I am just not very sanguine that it will happen.

When you're talking to your own constituents and the taxpayers of Canada, I think they have to understand the enormous costs we would have to bear if the whole situation would break apart there. Obviously, it's been so recent that they have seen it on the screens of the media and they can identify with that. They know the costs to the people in that area and to us when we have to—the dilemmas of intervention.

By the way, on your earlier question, six years ago NATO needed a new mission at the end of the Cold War. They needed to, as they used to frivolously say, “rent a threat”. They needed a threat in the world, and of course the peoples of Bosnia and the Balkans provided that obvious threat with the bloodletting and the dissolution of Yugoslavia and then Bosnia.

Today I think NATO's credibility is on the line. We have been talking to the other east European states about enlargement. Enlargement is coming. It would hardly look good for NATO's credibility if they were to pull out of a zone where they are trying to encourage the forces of peace after an emergency situation. It would hardly look good to the Hungarians who have just voted and to all the other peoples of eastern Europe should they have a crisis. So I think that's absolutely central.

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If I can go back for a moment to the honourable member's point about European efforts in this area of the world, I visited Albania back in March when the multinational force was there led by the Italians and Greeks. I went in with the Greek army to Albania, through circumstance. Of course the Europeans responded there. They didn't respond with the Western European Union, with rapid reaction corps or with European military groups that have already been planned to deal with crises. They went in for their own purposes in an ad hoc way. The Greeks wanted fewer refugees from Albania to come toward them. The Italians wanted the same thing, and they brought some other Europeans together.

But Europe is not prepared to deal with the Bosnian situation. It wasn't prepared in 1992 and it isn't prepared today. That's why I think it's important we stay with this realistic appraisal in the short run.

The Co-Chairman (Mr. Robert Bertrand): Thank you. Mr. McWhinney.

Mr. Ted McWhinney (Vancouver Quadra, Lib.): I'd like to thank Professor Cohen for coming along. We often get so-called expert witnesses coming to parliamentary committees, but Professor Cohen has been in this for a quarter of a century and is clearly the top Canadian specialist and one of the top world specialists. He speaks Serbo-Croat in addition to Russian, and this is very unusual among experts from universities.

The Co-Chairman (Mr. Bill Graham): Professor McWhinney, should a conflict of interest be declared here?

Mr. Bob Mills: I like him too.

A voice: You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.

Mr. Ted McWhinney: Since I have also given expert evidence before the United States Congress on Yugoslavia, I suppose we both have degrees of expertise.

You basically seem to be saying that the Dayton accord was really a fundamental error in their thinking and the petition option should have seriously been considered. You also seem to be saying that the U.S. role, so often with good intentions, has perhaps not been the most useful or constructive. But taking us to the present situation, the Dayton accord is a fact. It creates its own expectations and its own new facts.

Partly picking up Professor Turp's question, do you believe it would be a more useful role, if Canadian forces were to continue there, if they were under United Nations direction rather than NATO or the OSCE?

Do you think it might be a more constructive role—and it is certainly part of federalism viewed as a process and not a static body of institutions—to at least examine and possibly encourage special links among the three constituent units of Bosnia and their parent countries than to discourage it? Do you have suggestions of this sort that might help Parliament in making up its mind on continuation of the Canadian presence and the policies under which that might be done?

Prof. Leonard Cohen: Maybe I can address those in reverse order.

It's a great irony that I think Mr. Tudjman, the President of Croatia, would very much like to integrate the Bosnian-Croat enclave into Croatia as quickly as possible in as large a territorial unit as possible, whereas Mr. Milosevic in Serbia hardly wants the Bosnian Serbs to be part of Serbia-Montenegro because most of those new voters in an enlarged Serbia-Montenegro wouldn't vote for him, and he's now on the skids, as they say, anyway. His power has been waning and he's holding on by his fingernails, although he might do that for a long time, because he's a very adroit politician.

I wouldn't really recommend right now pushing the Bosnian Croats or the Bosnian Serbs into the tender mercies of either one of those individuals. Right now we should continue with some of the things we've been doing, and with a troop contingent from NATO. But we have to be realistic. There's a succession crisis coming in both Croatia and in Serbia-Montenegro, probably in the early part of the next millennium, and it's very likely the Croats and Serbs of Bosnia will drift into some new Croatia and new Serbia-Montenegro. I don't think we should intervene and try to assist in that kind of development.

• 1040

On the question of the UN and the OSCE, I'd much prefer to see the UN and the OSCE running the operation. Quite frankly, I think the antipathy of the United States towards the UN operation under UNPROFOR, the double key, and all of the things that Mr. Holbrooke, Mrs. Albright and President Clinton feel so strongly about now, wouldn't make it realistic to try to transfer the jurisdiction into the hands of those organizations. With the lessons they've learned from UNPROFOR, some of which were unfortunately due to very negative experiences, they might do a better job today than they did when they went in initially.

As far as the Dayton accord is concerned, I agree with you completely that it has created new facts on the ground. It was a flawed document from the beginning, but was entirely driven by the U.S. presidential election. Clinton gave Holbrooke the mandate to make peace in Bosnia come what may, and he used that bulldozer diplomacy at Dayton to achieve that peace.

Only days after Holbrooke made the Dayton peace in November 1995, he was testifying before committees of the United States Congress. When members of Congress, in a setting very much like the one we have here today, asked Mr. Holbrooke about all of these annexes and provisions, there was great laughter on his part, on and his aides' part, and on the part of the members of Congress. Nobody could make any sense of the annexes and the provisions for the political architecture of Dayton.

I was very offended by the frivolity at that particular meeting, because Holbrooke had just come from Dayton after he created this new architecture, yet there he was being very jovial about whether or not it could possibly work. He didn't particularly care if it would work by 1997, or if it would work by 2020. What he wanted to do was achieve peace in Bosnia for the U.S. presidential election. He did that and, as I and I think others said before, that in itself was an impressive achievement because it was hard to see any peace coming out. But Dayton today isn't, and Dayton then wasn't, the kind of document....

If you look at its political provisions, they're just so cumbersome—the arrangement of the presidency, the parliaments, the provisions and prerogatives of the entities—that no state could possibly function under those provisions. Holbrooke didn't care about the details in November 1995. He just wanted to achieve peace. He did that, and the military has done a very good job in securing that.

The Co-Chairman (Mr. Bill Graham): Can I just follow on with that? This relies on your point and Professor McWhinney's point as well: partition as a possible solution.

When we were there, we were told by some shrewd observers that partition is entirely out because under no condition will the European powers accept a Muslim state in the centre of Europe, particularly with the suggestion that Mr. McWhinney made, that being that it might have ties with its home. I don't know what home he's thinking of for the Muslim end of the tripartite entity that's there—-

Mr. Ted McWhinney: I was thinking of Bosnian Croatia or Serbia.

The Co-Chairman (Mr. Bill Graham): —-but if one was to assume that there would be a tie to an outside entity, this would create a problem for the European nations, and a problem that they would regard with a great deal of difficulty. That is therefore a political imperative within a Europe that insists upon a plurinational existence of the present arrangement in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Do you have any observation about that, Professor Cohen? Do you think it's a realistic problem that they face, or do you think we were given an accurate observation when we were there?

Prof. Leonard Cohen: I think it is an accurate observation. I think there are grave concerns in the chancelleries, among the decision-makers of western Europe, about a Bosnian Muslim rump state. They feel it might be a basis for terroristic activity or for links with the unsavoury Middle Eastern powers rather than sober Middle Eastern powers and might not be good for Europe.

That being said, what are the alternatives? One is to try to encourage the Bosnian Muslims to work with the Croats. They have a sort of natural affinity in the area, but there's no love lost between those two units. President Izetbegovic has just really rejected the overtures of Mr. Tudjman about creating some kind of confederation between Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina's Muslim and Croat parts. That leaves very little choice on our part other than except to try to convince the Europeans that we may have to see some kind of a Bosnian rump state. We won't call it Muslim, although it will be predominantly Muslim, and I don't want to push the Bosnian Muslims into the tender mercies of Mr. Tudjman if they don't want to go in that direction.

• 1045

Of course, the other choice is that we spend our treasure and will for the next two or five decades just to nurture along what's going on now. That might be worth it, in and of itself, because of the alternatives. We might have to have a semi-protectorate for quite awhile in order to avoid the alternative.

The Co-Chairman (Mr. Robert Bertrand): Thank you. Mr. Hanger.

Mr. Art Hanger (Calgary Northeast, Ref.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'd like to thank the witnesses for their comments. It's certainly been enlightening for me, after having visited the region and sought as much information as I could out of the process while there.

One thing that became pretty clear to me, of course, is the fact that it seemed the Americans were calling the shots. They call it militarily and politically, and probably in every other region. For them to walk away, even though they may have put forward that deadline, seems quite improbable, because the operation won't function without them, even as they have set the security net up in and around Italy as well the Bosnian state. But when they make a comment, it seems everyone jumps.

Now, NATO doesn't want to look at or discuss any alternatives apart from what exists right now. That question was put to the secretary-general the last time he was here in Ottawa. He became very...I wouldn't say agitated, but definite: This is the way it's going to go, and this is the way it has to be. So it seems NATO has embarked upon this course and there's no wavering from it.

Interestingly enough, from comments made during the trip there was a concern about NATO's reputation as they lead up to, for instance, the September presidential elections. Right now they've done a lot of things right. They've kept peace in the area, and things are working out right. So behind the scenes they may be looking for an alternative, a way out. One of the things they've attempted to portray is that there has to be a replacement entity there when they leave, with strike-force capability.

Where in Europe is there going to be those capabilities, and is that a viable operation with NATO out of the picture?

Prof. Leonard Cohen: Current thinking is to leave a large enough force on the ground to protect the civilian workers in Bosnia and to try, from Aviano and from the Adriatic, to use forces that might need to assist those troops on the ground.

That's entirely possible. I don't know what the count is now on the number of civilian, NGO, and other workers, but between 10,000 and 20,000 people may be in Bosnia right now. Along with securing the environment, the idea is to be able to protect these individuals in the short run should things get dicey. That could very well happen because of the armaments coming into the area.

As the international force goes down, the more extreme elements in the party of democratic action that's very influential among the Bosnian Muslims will keep encouraging the idea that we'll build up the Muslim and Croat forces and eventually seize the land from the Serbs, because the international forces will be so diminished that it will be like the scenario for August 1995, when the Croats took back Krajina and rolled in. At that time, of course, they were encouraged by the United States, because that was pre-Dayton and part of the whole orchestration Holbrooke was working out, that of diplomacy and force.

Today, can you imagine if the Muslim-Croat forces would push against the Serbian forces after we've diminished the size of our international forces? That would create a massive influx of refugees into Serbia-Montenegro, with complications and blood-letting, because the Serbs would fight back to some degree. It would be an enormous mess.

So we don't want to downsize at this point to such a small force that we can't quickly react to things on the ground, or to encourage that kind of extremist scenario of the Muslims and Croats.

It's a very volatile situation. It changes every six months in terms of the considerations of the politicians in these three enclaves, and their strength and their intentions. Mr. Izetbegovic is a rather aged leader. There's going to be a succession struggle there. There's a struggle going on in the Republika Srpska between their various elements. The Bosnian Croats are constantly being manipulated from Zagreb by Mr. Tudjman.

• 1050

So the leadership situation changes from month to month, if not from hour to hour. We just have to look at what our troops can do in the long haul and at whether we should stay. We have to look at the dangers, the hazards, and the potential.

The Co-Chairman (Mr. Robert Bertrand): Mr. Assadourian.

Mr. Sarkis Assadourian (Brampton Centre, Lib.): I have a couple of short questions.

First, Mr. Cohen, you went to Serbia last spring. You mentioned that you have a very serious concern about the guerrilla movement in Muslim Herzegovina-Bosnia. Do you think that group—I saw a documentary on TV last year too, by the way—is serious enough to disrupt the balance there?

Second, we discussed here whether we should stay or end up...whatever the case may be. But my question is this: are we welcome there? If the leadership doesn't want us then what's the point of us pushing and saying we're going to stay there for five years or two years?

Third, my question is again for you, Mr. Cohen. You said you have serious concern or reservations about the Dayton agreement, that it was politically driven by the elections in the States. Do you think Canada should push for a Dayton II to address the specific concerns you have so that it could carry us to the 21st century with a better chance for peace in the region?

Prof. Leonard Cohen: They're short questions, but complicated. I'll try to be brief.

I think there will have to be a Dayton II or some kind of meeting at some point, maybe in a couple of years, to revisit the whole project, to realistically look at it. I'm not sure if that's going to be about nurturing partition or if we'll be lucky enough to be able to say that we did a good job and that Barbara and John were right, things are working out and the glue is coming together. I hope so. I think that such a meeting will probably try to deal with the strong segmentation and differentiation of the society and will have to encourage some kind of partition or special links with the neighbours.

Are we welcome? You asked that. I know CARE Canada has more experience in dealing every day with people, but my experience is that there is an element among the young people and the tolerant people, the average citizens, that wants us to be there. They don't want to go back to fighting. They want us to secure the environment.

Mr. Sarkis Assadourian: But what about the leadership?

Prof. Leonard Cohen: I think there is a segment of the leadership that is being financed by the international community and encouraged by the international community. It is starting to play the game of pluralistic politics. That segment would like us to stay because they've stuck their necks out to become sort of new democrats, born-again democrats, in a very nationalistic and ultra-patriotic environment. They want us to stay.

Unfortunately that segment of the political leadership is very small, very weak and very divided amongst themselves. We can't count on them to build pluralism. Naturally, they want us to stay. We come in and out of the country. We encourage them. We offer them media seminars. We take them abroad. We tell them about the virtues of rule of law. We show them our own example. They want us to stay.

As far as your first question about Muslim guerrilla groups goes, in the remarks you saw I might have been talking about the rise of the Kosovo Liberation Army, the Albanian Muslim guerrillas in Kosovo, the southern province of Serbia. That's a real problem. Kosovo is very inflammatory today. The students and some of these Muslim extremists there—Albanian Muslim extremists and guerrilla groups—want to end this period of Ghandian passivity in dealing with Mr. Milosevic and move to a more military solution.

That ties in to this question of remarks to constituents because I think we can fairly say that there are so many volatile flashpoints around Bosnia that if we don't secure the environment in Bosnia, at least for the short run, these things could spill over into neighbouring areas and we would have a very large kind of killing field. We have to watch out for that.

The Co-Chairman (Mr. Robert Bertrand): Mr. Grewal.

Mr. Gurmant Grewal (Surrey Central, Ref.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I appreciate the presentation by our guests. We also appreciate the professionalism and the role of our brave men and women in Bosnia.

Having said that, we know that 60% of the population is displaced and they want to return home. There are housing shortages in the area. There is legal and bureaucratic red tape. There is a destructive political leadership in that area, or for that matter, no capable or reasonable leadership. There is a lack of an equitable and fair justice system in the long run.

• 1055

The international community has created a dependency for maintaining peace in the area. I think our role should be to create peace and not keep peace. When we talk about keeping peace it's usually a long-term process. This creating process should be a short-term process. The international community or SJOR cannot afford to be in those countries for a longer period of time.

What is that infrastructure or mechanism in place, you call it glue, to keep the ethnic communities together? What are we doing to create home-grown innovative ideas for creating peace that will be a do-it-yourself process over a longer period of time? How do we measure our performance? Is it in terms of keeping peace or creating peace?

Ms. Barbara Shenstone: Of course the challenges of facilitating the process of peace in Bosnia are absolutely enormous, and they are mostly civilian processes. They have to be done by the people of Bosnia. They basically come down to the creation of a civil society. That means a society that has all sorts of elements where people can take responsibility and active roles in public life in figuring out what their needs are and in speaking those needs to the government; where there is a rule of law; where there are democratic institutions; and where there is economic prosperity.

What is the role of the international community? The first role of the international community is to help this peace agreement work. I think the reason this peace agreement is not working as well as it could comes down to this big unkept promise, which is freedom of movement and the right of return.

We've talked a lot about partition here as though it's kind of an inevitable thing and that somehow it's the solution. But I feel very strongly that it's not the solution. The partition, first of all, would probably involve the absorption of two regions: RSK into what's now left of the Republic of Yugoslavia, Serbia; and Herzegovina into Croatia. But the third area, the area where the Bosniacs or the Muslims are now, is not going to be absorbed anywhere. It's a question of life and death to them that they survive as a group and as a people. So they're not going to accept this division.

I suggest the partition and this drift toward partition is itself inflammatory and in the long run will create more wars. It will lock those pieces into perpetual conflict where every issue becomes a territorial issue. Or it will create a horrible situation like Palestine in the Middle East where you have a group of people who can't really function. It's not in the interest of anybody else to let these people function as a state. They're continuously upset and angry and a source of violence for that region.

Mr. Gurmant Grewal: That's right, but what I'm trying to reach is the psychological and sociological problems in the area involved in the serious issue. What normally happens in the population is desire creates power, that power creates justice, and that justice creates love and peace in those areas. That is how the process follows.

When we talk of military pressure and all kinds of international pressure to create peace, we are probably looking for a solution from a different angle. But there could be a solution from a different angle if we try to resolve those basic differences or those kinds of things. Is any effort being taken by the international community to tackle the situation from sociological point of view?

Ms. Barbara Shenstone: If people can move freely, talk to each other and live with each other, they will actually get along with each other. There are efforts and all sorts of programs. We have one where we work with children and teachers and it's all about peaceful problem-solving.

• 1100

We train social service providers and they address all sorts of things: their fears for the future; their resentment, hate and sense of violation for injustices in the past and what they hope they can.... There are efforts to do that.

At the moment they're beginning, and one has to chip away at these things, but if the whole thing falls apart again, it won't be just a question of picking up the pieces again. It will be a whole new, horrible ballgame.

It is slow and painful, but in fact there is some movement and there are efforts, not just by internationals but by Bosnians themselves. And you're right, it does have to come from the Bosnians themselves, but we can at least keep faith with those forces, not just give up on them and say it's hopeless, guys; you're always going to be in a mess; you're not capable of justice, you're not capable of living together. Surely that is a terrible giving up and really rather irresponsible.

The Co-Chairman (Mr. Bill Graham): Mr. Graham.

Mr. John Graham: I agree with what Barbara is saying. I would just add that a great deal has to be done on the ground to encourage the people themselves to move in the directions you've described. A lot is going on, certainly with CARE, but also with the organization I work with, the OSCE.

One priority is dealing with the police. It's trying to make the police more professional, more proud of being professional, and as a result less politicized. This includes democratization governance programs, increasing dialogue and getting people used to the habit of discussing some of these very sensitive issues.

There is enormous work being done in human rights, not always successfully, but cumulatively it's producing results. The international community has done a lot to strengthen the ombudsman system. The ombudsman system has had some successes.

This is the first level, the foundation, which has to be developed before the second phase, the return, the integration, is going to be able to take place, if indeed it can take place. The environment into which the refugees can return has to be improved by these efforts on the ground. These efforts are taking place, but if you ask how long it's going to take, how successful it's been and what sorts of timeframes, then I think there are very few of us who have answers.

The Co-Chairman (Mr. Bill Graham): Mr. Brison.

Mr. Scott Brison (Kings—Hants, PC): I appreciate your candour this morning relative to what you feel that realistic time line will be in terms of effective engagement. From what I heard last week in Bosnia, and what I'm gathering from your presentation as well, one of the problems with the Dayton accord is not the nature of the agreement but the time lines that were set, which were unrealistic and politically motivated domestically in the U.S.

I explained this to a constituent over the weekend and I described what happened to Bosnia over a four-year period as being like breaking a bone and it takes weeks to heal. You can't expect the destruction that has taken place over years to be fixed over a lesser time, realistically. So I appreciate your candour.

The first question is about conditionality and tying funds to municipalities that are complying with the Dayton accord. Most of the first IMF funds went to the Muslim-Croat federation only under Sintra. I think the Serb Republic are expecting about one-third of the funds in the next IMF.... It strikes me that you should have more ability to control some of the activities if there is money attached to it.

• 1105

The second question is about media. One of the articles I read about the conflict was saying that it was very much a top-down conflict; that these people had coexisted relatively peacefully for some time and that Karadzic, Milosevic, and Tudjman utilized media to instil hate. They actually compared it to if you gave the KKK control of the U.S. media for two months, if you could imagine the bloodshed that would be created by that type of top-down media utilization for hatred. I'd like to get some feedback from you as to the effectiveness now in utilizing media to ensure fair elections, for instance, and also in rebuilding the nation.

Prof. Leonard Cohen: If you would give the control of the Canadian media to hatemongers for a month or two, it wouldn't convince the Canadian people to become hatemongers. You have to have a message that resonates in the population.

This phrase about the Ku Klux Klan is born of a paragraph at the end of one book I won't mention, which suggests that Mr. Tudjman and Mr. Milosevic created all this enormous hate, they contributed to it, they exacerbated it. But the feelings of revanchism, antagonism and animosity were very strong in the society before the war even started. All they did is play to those unhappy kinds of feelings. You have to have the messenger that the ultra-nationalist mobilized there, and you also have to have the audience that will receive a message that will resonate.

I suppose several years of Ku Klux Klan message anywhere in the United States or Canada can create a new generation of people who might hate. But you can't do it overnight. That message came to a population that was already profoundly segmented below the surface of the Titoist polity. So that's a problem in itself.

On conditionality, a lot of my views on conditionality come from a long talk with Canada's representative for giving out aid in Bosnia, Michael Berry, who's now resigned but is living out in British Columbia, where I live. I talked to Michael at length about this, and my feelings from that conversation and from reading about what has been happening in Bosnia suggests that every time we threaten to turn the tap off, we threaten and we don't turn the tap off; we can't turn the tap off. That's why I used that quote from General Klein about Bosnia being on a blood transfusion and you can't cut off the blood or it will die completely. Those forces, those Bosnian politicians, know that. We're never going to cut the tap off completely. We might cut it off for a few days, but we're going to turn it back on. Someone in Washington or Brussels is going to demand we turn it back on even for our own Canadian projects, because they don't want the thing to die in that sector. So I think that's important.

I would like to speak briefly to this question of civil society without giving a political science lecture, which is an occupational kind of a disease, so I'll try to avoid it.

Civil society simply means creating organizations below and outside the control of the state. For the foreseeable future the state, state elites and party elites are going to be far stronger than civil society. All the organizations, the whole fabric of non-governmental organizations we have that keeps our politics democratic, won't exist in Bosnia for a long time. That's part of the reason I was using that framework of 20-20. It's certainly something to encourage. It's something we can invest in, but I don't expect results overnight that are really going to keep the state elite accountable.

The Co-Chairman (Mr. Robert Bertrand): Thank you very much. Mr. Graham, you had something to add?

Mr. John Graham: Yes.

I'm glad you mentioned the media. I would agree with Professor Cohen that the development of media is extremely important. It is one of the areas where we can see results and are beginning to see results over the short term. In the area I was in it's the push, the pressure upon the media. Some professional help has changed the kind of programming that people are listening to; it's reduced in some areas—not all areas—the vicious rhetoric. There's the development of a habit of moderate debate. This is one of the few things we should be concentrating on that should have priority that can produce real results in a relatively short term.

• 1110

The Co-Chairman (Mr. Robert Bertrand): John.

Mr. John Richardson (Perth—Middlesex, Lib.): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I just wanted to hark back to a couple of things that touched me a few years ago when I visited the former Yugoslavia. As a group in the defence committee, we were in an area that was being heavily fought over. We went to visit the mayors of the towns when we stopped. One particular town was a strongly Muslim town, Visoko. We then had a meeting with the mayor in his council chambers. He allowed us to speak, and he spoke.

He talked about the terrible artillery bombardment that took place in their town the night before and the number of people who were killed. There were children and women of all ages. We sat there. One of our members said he hoped that the children will forget this and never remember it.

The mayor was big. He was an engineer. He brought his hand up and then hit the table as hard as he could. He said they would never let them forget this. That set the tone when we went from town to town. There was that recurring theme of “we will not forget”.

Prof. Leonard Cohen: Excuse me, I think you put your finger on it. It's trans-generational socialization in the family. The media is very important, but it's that familial socialization that's the key to the hatred.

Mr. John Richardson: It's the oral history. It's driven by oral history. I was shocked that we were naive enough to ask the question, knowing the situation, but it got our attention.

When we went back this time, we saw a different Bosnia and Visoko. We saw free movement in the streets. We did know there were problems. We knew that landmines were still out there, but there was at least the movement of people and goods. It showed that there was some sort of amelioration of the situation.

I'm just going to ask about something. Some fundamental things about human life were at play here. In your notes, I zeroed in immediately on the fact that the security of you and your family come first.

In the notes, you hit on something that is very basic to the family unit. When 50% of one group and more than 75% in another group can be unemployed, there's hardly any security anywhere. There's fear and instability. They'll follow probably whatever direction will lead them out of that insecure situation.

That's just a microcosm, because there's more to this story than that. We saw it everywhere. Men were standing by the roadside having their coffee break when there's no money, but we did see the building of homes because of tremendous disaster and the disruption of homes in that area. But there was nothing else. There didn't seem to be a lot of economic revitalization, except in the home-building business.

I know economic stimulation was supposed to be part of the Dayton program. I think if they get it into an employment situation where there's some kind of stability and security in their home, food, and family, then they may be able to sit back and rationalize the situation. However, that won't be a five-year plan, that's a fifty-year plan.

Certainly I would like to have you take that step a little further, because I don't think we're going to go anywhere with those kinds of unemployment figures, no matter how good our plan is.

Prof. Leonard Cohen: The figures were about 90% at the end of the war. So you can imagine that getting to 70% or 50% is enormous progress. If we keep moving it down that fast, that'll do a lot of good.

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But I think you're quite right. You have to have—as Clinton himself used to say when he didn't go into Bosnia—“the economy, dummy”. It's the economy and security first, right? Economic security must precede even these political impulses that we want to cultivate. If I can quickly put it into my own framework, I would say that provides a reason to stay right now—to enhance the economic reconstruction projects—but don't assume that those employed people won't have those images that you worried about, towards other ethnic groups.

Ms. Barbara Shenstone: Yes, I agree with you. I think we can all remember the Marshall Plan implemented after the Second World War. It was basically a huge economic aid plan, and it wasn't based on conditionality.

At CARE, we have this debate a lot about conditionality. Because Dayton is so difficult to implement, and because the civilian implementing agencies have not been able to in fact push the agreement in other ways, people have fallen back on conditionality in the Balkans as a way of forcing the Dayton agreement. As Professor Cohen has said, that's been ineffective.

There's a thing now at the UN called the Open Cities Project. By promising economic aid, it's basically an attempt to reward municipalities that will allow refugees to return. It has been a big failure. Basically, very small numbers of people have gone back.

I think there are four communities that have been declared open cities. One of them is Bihac, where 97% of the population was Muslim before anyway. Residents there don't mind letting a few people back in, because it's not going to affect the local politics.

It's not going to work. I don't think you can pay people to get along. You're not going to pay people, as Professor Cohen said, especially if they know you're not really that serious.

However, I do think there's a horrible disparity between the economic aid given to the federation and to Republika Srpska. For very good motives, that has been because Republika Srpska seems to be particularly uncooperative in terms of the Dayton agreement. But it is unfortunate, because it fuels resentment amongst the population in Republika Srpska, where unemployment figures are in fact much higher.

I think it also makes people more vulnerable to these buttons that Professor Cohen has mentioned. As you said, if you're insecure and people tell you there's no work, that it's their fault over there, and that you're being treated unfairly, you continue to give people a sense that their only solution is to gather behind the strongmen who say they will protect them. Those strongmen are in fact probably not going to protect them, but they are the only source of strength and the only choice at the moment for a destitute family.

I think there should be more aid to Republika Srpska. Maybe there should be conditionality, but it should be applied very specifically—that is, specific communities that are not complying are denied. I think that's pretty hard for the international community to do, though.

I do think that if we could get the Dayton agreement working better.... The problem with the Dayton agreement, in my mind, is its central contradiction. It divides the people of Bosnia in one part of it, and it says they will all be back together in the other part of it. And this is the difficulty. I think the overwhelming effort at the moment has been to strengthen the divisions, but I think we need to make it work together. The divisions are a temporary cooling off solution, they're not a permanent solution.

That brings us back to the question of the war criminals. It is important to get the war criminals because, again, this issue is one of those buttons you can push. The fact that war criminals can flout Dayton and run around influencing politically and militarily with their mafias, etc., means that it's very easy on the other side to blame the whole group. You can say all the Serbs are the same, instead of individualizing. Actually, they're not all the same. Some of them are very bad, but we're going to deal with the very bad ones. If you can blame the war on a few bad ones, you don't have to blame the whole people. You could bring a sense of justice into it, and I think that would be powerful.

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Yes, it's long and it's hard and it's complex. That's all.

Prof. Leonard Cohen: Morality is always the privilege or prejudice of the strong. If we say such and such a person is a war criminal, or The Hague does, that doesn't mean that even non-criminal, non-pathological, good, average Serbs want us to deal with that question the way we see fit, or the way The Hague sees fit, because that's part of the engineering too. It depends on your perspective.

A lot of Croats and Serbs and Muslims had nothing to do with what those war criminals have done—and we have a lot of evidence of what they have done—and don't want us to deal with them. They want to deal with the situation themselves.

It goes back to the honourable member's statement about whether we are in the business of peacekeeping or peace-creating. It sort of reminds me of General Colin Powell's response to President Clinton when Clinton was asking him at the beginning of the Bosnian war whether the U.S. should intervene. He's quoted as saying “Mr. President, we do deserts; we don't do mountains.”

I think in Canada, with our experience in peacekeeping, we do peacekeeping. We did that for over two decades in Cyprus. We dampened the conflict. We didn't change the people. To change the people is a more ambitious enterprise. That's what I talked about as creating nation-building and state-building, and I think that's too ambitious a task for us, or to expect from our next period of commitment in the next couple of years.

Mr. John Richardson: One of the highlights of our tour for the eight days in that region was with President Plavsic of Srpska. We had an hour and a half audience with her, and it was significant to see that at least she brought back from the United States some enlightenment about how to approach.... You know, she is a Serb nationalist, and she did have a plan that was rational and human. We had a good chance to discuss those points with her and I was quite impressed with her openness with us.

Thank you.

The Co-Chairman (Mr. Bill Graham): I will take this opportunity to interject at this point to say we now have with us Professor Schabas from the University of Quebec in Montreal. He is an expert in international law and also in the war crimes tribunal.

The war crimes issue has come up. It has just been raised now. Mr. Richardson mentioned our interview with Mrs. Plavsic. Professor Schabas, we were told by her that in fact the Serb constitution, or the Constitution of the Republika Srpska, makes it impossible to extradite someone from that republic to the Hague tribunal. We know that other countries, France being the notable one, does not extradite its citizens, but tries them itself. Her position was that there was a constitutional impediment to them being able to obey Dayton and therefore there's some question as to whether or not they have to amend their constitution in order to be in accord with Dayton.

I just wondered, since you have looked at this issue, whether you could enlighten us on that, or had any other comments on the tribunal's success or lack of success in dealing with the war criminals in the former Yugoslavia. That is an issue that has come up a great deal and does tie into whether our troops should stay, because in fact that ties into the success or lack of success of the Dayton accords themselves.

We will go from a list and people will have a chance to ask you questions as well.

Professor William Schabas (Université du Québec à Montréal): Thank you, Chair. I had prepared some comments and I planned to address your question second, but since you've asked it first, I'm going to answer it first, the answer to Mrs. Plavsic.

There are really two answers to the question. The first is that when the statute for the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia was set up, the drafters of the statute, the Security Council, were aware this argument might be raised that states could not extradite nationals, because many countries have this provision either in their criminal law, or even in their constitution. In fact, there was even some debate that Canada had such a rule in its constitution in section 6 of the charter. That was settled by the Supreme Court of Canada in the Cotroni case and it was decided that we didn't have such a rule and that we could extradite nationals.

The Security Council was aware of the danger, and therefore when the statute was drafted, article 29.2 of the statute, which provides for the obligation of states to cooperate with the tribunal up to and including the transfer of suspects upon request of the tribunal, the Security Council used the word “transfer” so it could avoid the debate about extradition. The word “extradition” does not in fact appear in the Security Council resolution.

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Mrs. Plavsic isn't introducing a new argument. The Security Council knew all about this in May of 1993, when the statute was adopted, and used the word “transfer” in order to make it simpler, so she wouldn't have to say there is a constitutional obstacle.

I think the reasoning of it is that it's not a case of extradition. I think this is a logical, legal argument, which you can make within the courts in the Republika Srpska or in the former Yugoslavia, that it's not a case of extradition, it's a case of transfer, because extradition is a procedure that takes place between sovereign states. We're not dealing with sovereign states. We're dealing with some new phenomenon, which is the International Criminal Tribunal.

So I think that's the first argument, and it's an argument that was addressed by the Security Council to make it simpler for people like her, if they really wanted to cooperate with the tribunal, which I think is doubtful, to have the legal argument to do it.

The Co-Chairman (Mr. Bill Graham): It would appeal more to the lawyers than the accused, though, who might not see the distinction with quite.... However, that's an interesting....

Prof. William Schabas: Of course there's a fundamental political and moral question as well. The international tribunal was set up in order to prevent impunity for war crimes and in order to deal with the fact that the courts in the former Yugoslavia, and particularly within Bosnia, are not carrying through with their obligations to punish or extradite for crimes against humanity and serious violations of humanitarian law. As you point out, of course, the accused are not anxious to be brought to trial, but that's a common feature of accused all around the world.

The second argument, of course, is that if the constitution is an impediment, well, then, they have to change the constitution, because the obligation at international law is superior to the principles under domestic law. I know with international lawyers here I'm not teaching you anything you don't know, but that point and many of these questions have been addressed by the International Criminal Tribunal in some of its judgments.

If I could just refer the committee to a decision of the president of the tribunal, President Cassese, in the Blaskic case of April 3, 1996, President Cassese says:

There exists in international law a universally recognised principle whereby a gap or deficiency in municipal law, or any lack of the necessary national legislation, does not relieve States and other international subjects from their international obligations; consequently, no international legal subject can plead provisions of national legislation, or lacunae in that legislation, to be absolved of its obligations; when they do so, they are in breach of those obligations. This proposition is supported by copious international case law...

As I say, I'm not saying anything the members of the committee don't already know, but this point has been reviewed and these arguments have been rejected by the International Criminal Tribunal in a decision rendered by its president.

So that's the answer on Mrs. Plavsic's argument that domestic law is an impediment to cooperating with the tribunal.

More generally on the obligation to cooperate, of course this is set out in article 29 of the statute. It's an obligation on all states, and that means not only the states of the former Yugoslavia but also Canada. It implies for Canada, of course, the obligation to enact legislation within Canada in order to cooperate with the tribunal, something, I say with some regret, we have not yet done. I think it's an embarrassment to Canada, and if I were Mrs. Plavsic's legal adviser, this would be an argument I would provide her with in order to answer Canadians who suggest she should be cooperating with the international tribunal.

That being said, she is under an obligation to cooperate not only because of article 29 of the statute, which is a Security Council decision and therefore binding on all member states of the United Nations, but also as a result of the Dayton agreement; and article 9 of the Dayton agreement provides that:

The Parties shall cooperate fully with all entities involved in implementation of this peace settlement, as described in the Annexes to this Agreement, or which are otherwise authorized by the United Nations Security Council...

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So the obligation is set out in the Dayton agreement, and it has been noted in judgments of the International Criminal Tribunal. Here I would refer you to the decision of Trial Chamber I of July 11, 1996, in the Karadzic and Mladic case. They are the principal culprits we're waiting for to come and be arraigned before the tribunal. Paragraph 100 of that judgment points out:

...the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia has given an undertaking to ensure that Republika Srpska would cooperate fully with the International Tribunal. That undertaking was given by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia at the request of the delegation of the Republika Srpska at Dayton to guarantee the international obligations of Republika Srpska.

So the trial chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal noted that in refusing to surrender Karadzic and Mladic, the Republika Srpska has violated its international obligations under the Dayton agreement. From a legal standpoint, then, there's no doubt whatsoever.

There's an interesting question that relates to the role of the SFOR, which is that member states participating in the SFOR are required as well to comply with and to give effect to orders given by the tribunal. There is one order that is of particular interest to us, the order that resulted from that decision of July 11, 1996, in the Karadzic and Mladic case—that is, the issuance of an international arrest warrant for Karadzic and Mladic.

Every member state of the United Nations is required now, pursuant to the law I've just cited, to give effect to that order. This would mean that forces that are part of the SFOR within the former Yugoslavia are required to give effect to that order and to ensure the arrest of Karadzic and Mladic, and their transfer to the international tribunal.

Those are my brief comments. Perhaps I could conclude by referring you to the statement of President Cassese of the international tribunal before the United Nations General Assembly on November, 4, 1997, about two weeks ago. President Cassese—and I'm citing here from the press release of the General Assembly plenary—said:

Practically speaking, it had been extremely difficult to achieve significant State cooperation, in particular, by ensuring that States comply with the Tribunal's orders to arrest and deliver indicted persons to The Hague. While Croatia and the central authorities of Bosnia and Herzegovina had complied, to various degrees, with such orders, the two entities comprising Bosnia and Herzegovina, namely, the Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, had not done so, nor had the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which has thus flouted the authority of the United Nations.

The Co-Chairman (Mr. Bill Graham): Thank you, Professor Schabas. Mr. Benoit.

Mr. Leon E. Benoit (Lakeland, Ref.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

I must say, I enjoyed your presentations and the answers to your questions. It's been very informative. I appreciate that.

The mandate of this committee is to debate and discuss whether we extend Canada's presence in SFOR for another six months, until June 1997. I guess to that extent, this committee meeting is somewhat of a charade, because it seems to me the government members, and I think all of you, are pretty much looking beyond that. So my questions will deal with that.

I think the concerns of Canadians on this issue, first of all, are on how long Canada will be involved in Bosnia. Of course, how long Canada is involved will determine the costs and the risk to our troops. The longer they're there, the more they'll become drawn down. We just don't have the people to sustain this indefinitely, and that's a real threat to our troops.

Some of you have discussed this already and talked about it a bit, but I want to nail you down a little bit more in terms of how long you think, looking ahead, international forces will be involved in Bosnia if they stay there until the situation is put under control so that it's unlikely to be a major outbreak of war again.

Ms. Shenstone, you've said that time is a great healer. I want to ask how much time you think it will take to have the situation under control enough that the country can operate, without a major outbreak of war, without the international forces there.

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Mr. Graham, you said a minimum of five years but that still doesn't give us your best guess as to how long international forces will be involved.

Mr. Cohen, you have used the year 2020. You have sort of thrown out that figure now and again.

As well, I want to ask you too, Mr. Schabas, how long do you all believe international forces will be involved in Bosnia?

Mr. Graham.

Mr. John Graham: I was hoping you'd start with somebody else. It's a very difficult question to answer. Part of my answer is that we too often delude ourselves by setting goals and saying, for example, that by five years we should be out of the Bosnian woods. I didn't put it that way, and as you said yourself, I expressed it as a minimum time.

In my view, the five years is a planning time. There is an enormous amount to do in the peace-creating and the changing of the environment, in working with the people and getting the people to try to change some of their attitudes and in working on the police, with the media and on human rights with the ombudsman. All of these things need a better timeframe, and it can't be done realistically with timeframes of six months or even a year, which we have been working with before. And certainly, it can't work with what's been described as the “American exit strategy”.

So I guess my unsatisfactory answer is to say let's look at it five years down the road; we're going to have to review it. I think it's going to take longer than that. At the end of five years, or maybe before that, one hopes, if the chemistry we are applying has any success at all, we may be able to reduce our military commitment and therefore realize some cost savings, but we should then, having done that, review it and see what the next five years look like.

I think it's very difficult to say the year 2015 or any specific year, and it's even more difficult if you start reading Bosnian history.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Would you say, though, that as an example, a more realistic timeframe would be 20 to 30 years? I'd like each one of you to answer as briefly as you can. I think it's important. I think Canadians really deserve to know what the experts such as yourselves see as the most likely timeframe for international forces staying in Bosnia.

Mr. John Graham: You can accuse me of wiggling off the end of this hook, but to give an honest answer to you, I really couldn't say at this point that it is going to be 10 years or 20 years. It could easily be, but then we're talking about what kind of commitment. And the nature of the commitment eight years from now, we would expect and hope, would be very different from the kind of commitment we have now.

We would expect and hope that it would be much more on resettlement, on continuing economic development, on the various human rights programs that we have. And we we would expect and hope that the situation with the enforced security environment, which is an absolutely indispensable part of the situation now, can be not totally dismantled—I don't think it can be dismantled for maybe 10 or 12 years—but maybe largely dismantled, with sort of trip wires and smaller monitoring groups.

I really don't think I can put a date on it, and therefore I can't really answer your question in the way that you want me to.

Mr. Leon Benoit: I think your answer helps.

Could the others give their views of what they see in the crystal ball?

Ms. Barbara Shenstone: I think it certainly will take a good 20 years before there is any kind of peace founded on democracy in this region. Of course the jury is out on whether that will happen at all.

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In terms of a commitment of troops, I think you have to look immediately at five years, and I would hope for far less after that. But again, like John said, it's very hard to read. I think we have to be realistic. We can't suggest that it's going to happen between now and next June, or now and two years from now. Definitely not.

Maybe Canada doesn't need to be part of it for all that length of time, although I do think Canadians' contribution should definitely be there for at least another two years, and probably five years, because I think Canada does have a good reputation. We have a small commitment, but it is a significant one. We can bring quality, and we can bring a special kind of professionalism to this. We don't come with the baggage of the Germans, the French, the Russians, or whoever. So I would recommend that Canada sees itself there for five years, and I bet some kind of very minimal international presence is there for longer.

Prof. Leonard Cohen: I think the caveats of the preceding speakers are quite right. Who knows? You can't crystal-ball it.

That being said, the figure of 2020 or 2050 was meant to refer to how long it would take for democratic aspects to gel in Bosnia. If a bomb goes off tomorrow and there's a very high casualty rate for SFOR NATO, will NATO's staying power and ability to take casualties be any better than the U.S. record? Probably not. How long Canada stays depends on you. Would Canada stay if the U.S. and, say, France and Britain left? I doubt it.

So my answer to that—and I'm not trying to be frivolous, this is really meant quite seriously—is that it depends on the next U.S. presidential election. Certainly the Clinton administration is not going to leave, and if Vice-President Gore is elected president, he will continue that strategy—he has almost suggested that he would—if not an even more ambitious strategy, because that's his own proclivity for engineering peace in that region of the world. He's very close to some of the politicians in Bosnia, and in the Bosnian Muslim sector in Sarajevo.

If you look at the benchmarks or calendars that go with those elections, I'm sure the international community is going to probably be there for a few years, maybe until the early years of the next millennium. I have no recommendations at this point, because you have to look at it on a case by case, month by month basis, when you ask how long we should stay, how long Canada should commit troops to a stabilization force.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Do you think looking at it on a six-month basis is reasonable?

Prof. Leonard Cohen: I think that's what we'll have to do. It isn't the best way to approach it, but can we give an open-ended commitment in terms of budgets and political will for two years, for three years? I don't think we can do that. I don't think you can do that. If you could, I think that would be the best way.

If the Government of Canada could say in a blanket statement that we're going to stay there for two years or five years and that we're going to try to do this, that would certainly alleviate the kinds of mixed messages that are being sent right now by the international community. But I don't believe we can do that. It's therefore only realistic that we're going to have to visit it in shorter periods.

The Co-Chairman (Mr. Bill Graham): But Mr. Cohen, if I understand what you're saying and what the other witnesses are saying, even if we said we were going to commit to stay there for five years, it doesn't necessarily in any way mean 1,200 troops or 1,250 troops with the dispositions that we presently have, plus 80 policemen. It might mean 300 troops and 100 policemen, or more CIDA aid and less troops. There is a whole host of conditions—

Prof. Leonard Cohen: And it might mean more.

The Co-Chairman (Mr. Bill Graham): Yes, it might mean more troops. But as far as this committee is concerned in terms of trying to struggle with the issue of whether or not we should we recommit until next June, there's certainly no suggestion on your part—or that of any of the witnesses I've heard—that if this goes on for another five years, we're going to be stuck with the level of troop commitments that we're presently stuck with. It might be a different mix of a commitment, but a commitment will be required, if I understand you.

Prof. Leonard Cohen: That's correct.

The Co-Chairman (Mr. Bill Graham): Okay. Thank you.

Prof. William Schabas: I think the last time I was asked this question was about two years ago at the Pearson Building, when we were discussing the Dayton agreement. I was asked whether or not I thought it was reasonable to think IFOR should stay in for one year and be out by the next presidential election, as had been promised. That was clearly unrealistic at the time. It will be years rather than months, that's for sure.

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Let me just add that the success of the International Criminal Tribunal will shorten the length of time we're there. That's the operating premise and a very valuable and acceptable one. If the tribunal works, the whole process of bringing peace to Bosnia ought to go faster and be more secure.

The Co-Chairman (Mr. Robert Bertrand): Thank you very much.

We'll go to Mr. Cloutier. I'd like to remind everybody to respect the five-minute question period.

Mr. Hec Clouthier (Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, Lib.): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you very much for coming here this morning. I guess it's a rather generic statement, but in times of peace and prosperity, people, cities and countries aspire and live to higher standards because we are not forced to do something we do not want to do. As we know, war is a stern teacher, and in depriving us of the power to satisfy our daily needs and desires our morals gravitate toward the situation in which we find ourselves.

We know there's a great deal of difficulty going on in Bosnia. If one thing has become very clear to me this morning, it is that the expert witnesses seem to be unanimous in their agreement that we can't put a timeframe on when this Bosnian conflict will be rectified. Far be it for me to be a Pollyanna—or the dichotomy of that, a Cassandra—but I just don't think we can definitively say in six months, one year, five years or ten years there's going to be an end to this conflict. Idealistically we'd like to say it, but realistically we can't.

The one question I have is to John Graham, who was involved in the electoral process. I firmly believe that war is not the answer. The military is not the answer as far as military supremacy. We need a strong political leader in that area, as in perhaps any other area throughout the world where there is war and conflict. Do you believe there is such a person who can pull the divergent opinions together? Can the people of Bosnia or that particular area rally around one person? Is there someone there who can pull this together, or do we just keep going the way we're going? At the end of the day, it's not peacemaking, I believe it's peacekeeping.

I agree with Professor Cohen that we could be there for 10 to 50 years just to stabilize the situation. But I firmly believe the only way we're going to get out of this conflict, or any other conflict, such as in the Middle East, is if there is some strong political leader who can pull everything together. Is there one there?

Mr. John Graham: The short answer is no, not that I can see. There are certainly strong political leaders, but not with the outlook you are looking for.

All of the political leaders are still imprisoned by the recent past. Most of their senior supporters are imprisoned by the same passions of their culture. The political parties in the last series of elections that tried to appeal beyond one ethnic group—the Social Democratic Party, which was the former Communist Party, but much changed in attitudes and personnel—got maybe 10% or 12% of the vote across the country. That's not yet a powerful political magnet.

The ethnicity and the security concerns that arise within ethnicity are still very powerful. They are serious impediments to the emergence of the kind of leadership I think you're looking for.

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The Co-Chairman (Mr. Robert Bertrand): Mr. Turp.

[Translation]

Mr. Daniel Turp: Before I ask Mr. Schabas my question, I would like to discuss the deadline. I was not here for the last sitting of the legislature, but I understood why the deadline for Canadian participation was not the same as the deadline for the forces themselves, that is on June 30, 1998. I find that Canadian soldiers are being put in a very uncomfortable situation by having an assignment that differs from other Canadian forces. I think this is something to be avoided in the future, whatever the length of the assignment.

The assignment of Canadian troops will always be determined by the assignment of the United Nations forces. We may dream of a two- year or five-year assignment, but the assignment determined by the Security Council will undoubtedly be the reference assignment for all countries committing forces.

Mr. Schabas, when we met with Ms. Plavsic, not only did she submit this argument that you are refuting so decisively, she told us the court was impartial. Fifty-five Serbs have been brought before the court along with very few Croats and even fewer Bosnians. I told her not to fear for the objectivity of the new prosecutor, Ms. Arbour, who believes strongly in the rights of the accused.

I would like you tell us, in your opinion, whether the court has up to now demonstrated respect for the rights of the accused and if we can reassure Ms. Plavsic somewhat that what is taking place before the court is impartial and in complete compliance with the human rights of the people coming before it, handed over to it or transferred to it.

Mr. William Schabas: I don't know if what I have to say will be a comfort to Ms. Plavsic with regard to the court's impartiality. The notion of the court's lack of impartiality has been raised not only for the court in the former Yugoslavia but also for the court in Rwanda. It has been said that the ethnic composition of the accuseds demonstrates a lack of impartiality on the court's part. While Rwanda's international court is not exclusively composed of members of the Hutu tribe, the great majority of its members are.

It must be added that the court's jurisdiction is clear. There is no ethnic orientation in the Security Council's resolution or in the statute. Decisions are made by the prosecutor's office, which benefits autonomy and the total independence of charges brought before the court.

At Nuremberg, there were not many Jews among the accused; it was mostly Germans. This is the conclusion we must reach. Ms. Plavsic seeks an ethnic balance before the court, but I think that is not realistic because of the nature of the crimes and the people who committed them.

In terms of impartiality, the statute contains guarantees of impartiality and the right to defence. The texts of human rights agreements have been reflected, among them Section 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Moreover, regulations concerning defence lawyers have been adopted. Thus, there is a legal aid system that guarantees accuseds financing for lawyers and investigators. In his trial, which has just ended, Tadic was represented by three lawyers, including a highly reputed barrister from London.

I think therefore that there is no doubt about the quality of the justice. Several judgements handed down to date by the international court for the former Yugoslavia should reassure anybody who is concerned about the rights of the defence.

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In general, judgements by the lower court are reversed by the appeal chamber. This has happened many times. I am not speaking here of the prosecutor's office but of the court itself. The judges are very independent, very autonomous, very conscientious and very concerned about the rights of the defence.

The Co-Chairman (Mr. Bill Graham): Thank you very much, Mr. Schabas. Mr. Mills.

[English]

Mr. Bob Mills: A lot has been said and there are a lot of areas we could explore a lot further. The one maybe we haven't touched on is what started the destruction of the former Yugoslavia, which really is that whole rising up of nationalism and of nationalistic leaders. It seems to me if we're going to solve this problem in any kind of near future obviously the separation that has occurred as the various states split off...if you're going to get peace, there's going to have to be a downgrading of that level of nationalism.

I wonder if you see that happening, or if that in fact is never going to happen. I think you mentioned the kinds of uprisings they had in Kosovo. Are they still as rebellious as they were in, say, 1990?

Prof. Leonard Cohen: There is an enormous fatigue with nationalism in the Balkans. At the same time the sources of nationalism are still quite substantial. It ebbs and flows. It's a mixed picture. You have to look at each area of the country.

In a way, it really ties into John's answer about leadership, the question of whether we can find better leadership. To look at the next generation of elites and leaders and whether or not they are going to be nationalistic is one way of looking at this, and whether they are going to try to nurture that in their populations through demagoguery or just use of the media or whatever.

Looking at the elites very carefully, Muslim elites and Croat elites and Serb elites, I'm not very optimistic we'll be able to find that leader or leaders right now. They don't exist. There are people of goodwill in the leadership—they are few in number—who would like to see multi-ethnic tolerance.

But look at the rewards for a politician and look at the disincentives for dropping a nationalist or adopting a nationalist line. A politician who wants to get re-elected or get elected has to face the constituency and what it's like today. To send them a message that is one of inter-ethnic tolerance and brotherhood and unity again—say a social democrat who used to believe in that Titoist formula—there's not much of an incentive for that right now. It's a high-risk enterprise being a non-nationalist, an a-nationalist, or an anti-nationalist. That's all I can really say.

Of course the antagonism of the war I suppose has created these wounds, reopened wounds that were not healed in the first place. There had been no real therapy for the wounds of World War II. You have the strange phenomenon of Serbian paramilitaries going into towns during the war in Bosnia and in the cemetery shooting into the caskets of people who were buried after World War II, to seek revenge on the dead.

This pathology of trying to redress generational problems.... Some of that is due to the pathology of the soldiers and their drunkenness and their lack of discipline. Some has to do with the nationalism and feelings of revenge of their leaders. Fortunately, that phase has passed, but we still have, as I said, the children of the same fathers. The message is still quite ultra-patriotic, if not ultra-nationalistic.

It takes time to change. Educational processes are important. But changing the textbooks, changing the message in the classrooms, won't do it in and of itself. All those years under Titoism brotherhood and unity was taught, the curriculum was very benign, people sat next to each other on the school benches, Muslims, Croats, and Serbs, but that was a very thin veneer. It takes more than that really to engender that civil society and that change in attitude.

The Co-Chairman (Mr. Bill Graham): Ms. Shenstone.

Ms. Barbara Shenstone: Economic prosperity would also make a difference. One of the reasons people gather around these warlords or these nationalist zealots is that they don't see any alternative. I think commerce has a great democratizing effect on people, and one of the reasons they fell back on this zealotry had to do with the economic collapse of this part of the world. A lot of factors came together.

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We need to create alternative ways of solving problems. If people can see that the only way they can get protection, the only security they do have is to band together as a group and blame the other, then there will be more of this and it will go on forever. That's why chipping away at all these other elements of civil society can, over time, give people a sense that, yes, I can still be a Serb, but I can also be safe when I go and live in a community where there are Bosnians; I can feel safe when I have to go to court; I can feel safe when I apply for a telephone. So they can be a Serb and a Bosnian, or a Bosniac and a Bosnian. I think a lot of things have to come together to make that possible.

The Co-Chairman (Mr. Bill Graham): Mr. Hanger, you have 30 seconds.

Mr. Art Hanger: It's a quick question. I can see one variable that would impact directly into that whole scenario in Bosnia. That is, another conflict originating either in eastern Europe or the Middle East, where resources will suddenly have to be pulled from all over, and that would also impact on Canada's role in the Bosnia sector. Strong decisions would have to be made, even on troop numbers, possibly, in there.

In your viewpoint, what would be the quickest way to deal with another major conflict that would result in some very definite decisions made in Bosnia that will affect our troops and the international community there? What alternatives do we have?

Prof. Leonard Cohen: In terms of Bosnia, for other conflicts—

Mr. Art Hanger: No.

Prof. Leonard Cohen: —or the stretching of another conflict?

Mr. Art Hanger: The stretch.

Mr. John Graham: I guess one of the fundamental difficulties we face is that we don't have any stretch left in the Canadian Forces. I don't want to get into the politics of why this has happened, but they've been trimmed down to the bone. So we really don't have the option to keep on, in the short term, with the sort of strength we would need to continue our commitment in Bosnia and commit ourselves in any significant numbers to another crisis.

I'm saying this as a layman. I think the question should be posed to the military, who can give you a more authoritative answer. In our circumstances, we do not have that option. I guess the policies would have to be weighed according to the gravity of whatever crisis we're faced with, but I think we should be very reluctant in the short term to weaken the not large but still important commitment we have there now and for the kind of shortish term that we've been discussing.

The Co-Chairman (Mr. Bill Graham): Thank you very much.

We've run five minutes over our time, so I'm going to have to draw this portion to a close.

On behalf of all the members of the committee, I'd like to thank our witnesses very much. You've been extremely helpful. Those of us who had the opportunity to visit the country last week have had a great opportunity to have our experiences on the ground enriched by your evidence. For those of us who didn't have that opportunity, I think you've been very helpful in setting the framework for the debate that will take place tomorrow.

For the members of the committee, the co-chairs would like to suggest this. You appreciate that we are not a joint committee. Therefore each committee will have to make a separate report back to the House. Theoretically, that would mean we could report back two different resolutions. We believe, however, that would be probably not a productive way to go.

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At the moment, the defence committee has prepared a resolution and the foreign affairs committee has prepared another resolution. I think these resolutions are basically compatible with one another, and if you'd leave it with the two co-chairs, we'll try to put them together so that there's one draft resolution for our consideration tomorrow. Of course that may not be the resolution we adopt, but at least if we start the day with a draft in front of us, we'll have something to work with.

I would just suggest what I suggested to Mr. Bertrand, which is that I am recommending that the resolutions that are at the back of the defence committee report, on the last page, would be the framework for our resolution. Most of the whereases that are in the formal part of the foreign affairs committee report are contained in the text of the report that accompanies the defence committee.

We would then insert into that report a clause dealing with the issue of conditionality, which we believe is important, so that rather than having three clauses it would have four. The fourth would be that due to the lack of political will on the part of the parties at Dayton to implement the civilian aspects, the Government of Canada will continue to urge the policy of conditionality in order to advance more quickly the peace accords.

Mr. Turp, did you have an observation about that?

[Translation]

Mr. Daniel Turp: I would like to know whether we will debate this issue at our meeting tomorrow.

The Co-Chairman (Mr. Bill Graham): Yes.

Mr. Daniel Turp: I would also like to know if you will reserve sufficient time to debate a draft resolution since we planned to hear witnesses.

The Co-Chairman (Mr. Bill Graham): No, no, there will be no witnesses tomorrow.

Mr. Daniel Turp: There will be civil servants from the Department of Foreign Affairs.

The Co-Chairman (Mr. Bill Graham): They will be there as resource people we can consult as needed.

Mr. Daniel Turp: So we will have sufficient time to debate the joint recommendation.

The Co-Chairman (Mr. Bill Graham): We will present the resolution and we can always amend it. We will give everyone five minutes— with a liberal interpretation of the five-minute rule—to present their case. I hope the few hours we have planned will be sufficient to enable everyone to be heard so we can have a resolution at the end that is acceptable to the committee.

Mr. Daniel Turp: Will we receive the text of the recommendations in advance?

The Co-Chairman (Mr. Bill Graham): That's what we hope, yes.

Mr. Daniel Turp: I hope so too, personally.

The Co-Chairman (Mr. Bill Graham): Yes, yes. Thank you.

[English]

We're adjourned until 3:30 tomorrow afternoon in this same room. Thank you very much.