FAIT Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND INTERNATIONAL TRADE

COMITÉ PERMANENT DES AFFAIRES ÉTRANGÈRES ET DU COMMERCE INTERNATIONAL

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Thursday, February 17, 2000

• 0927

[English]

The Chair (Mr. Bill Graham (Toronto Centre—Rosedale, Lib.)): Colleagues, I call this meeting to order.

I will ask Ms. Swann from the Ottawa Serbian Heritage Society if she can go first. Then we'll hear Mr. Trifkovic. Mr. Dyer hasn't arrived yet.

I just want to warn everybody it may be a bit chaotic this morning. I'm not saying it isn't always chaotic, but it may be more chaotic than usual because we may be called for votes. This happened the last time. I apologize to the witnesses if we're called out of the room for votes.

The House seems

[Translation]

a little troubled, as we might say in French,

[English]

so we'll just have to deal with that if it occurs. Otherwise we'll go on.

I'll ask the witnesses to keep themselves to 10 minutes each and then we'll move to questions. Then we can hear from Mr. Dyer when he gets here.

Ms. Swann, thank you very much for coming. I appreciate your attendance.

Ms. Radmila Swann (Spokesperson, Ottawa Serbian Heritage Society): Good morning. First of all I would like to express our gratitude to the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade for giving us this opportunity to speak. We're enormously appreciative. It's one of the few opportunities the Serbian community has had to have its voice heard.

There are three key messages I would like to leave with you today. First, the war with Serbia was wrong. Secondly, far from preventing a humanitarian crisis, it created one. Thirdly, we in Canada must take every step possible, every step within our power, to rectify this situation.

On why the war was wrong, it was an illegal and unnecessary war. Canada had been known for fairness and compassion and, in the last 50 years, for our contributions to peace in the world. With the war in Yugoslavia we have tarnished that image. We have put the need to be a team player in NATO above every other consideration or principle.

Our law-abiding nation has been dragged into a war where we have broken a number of international laws: article 2 of the UN charter; NATO's own charter; the 1980 Vienna convention that forbids coercion to compel any state to sign a treaty; and the Helsinki Accords of 1975, which guarantee territorial frontiers of the states of Europe.

The war was also unnecessary because two very important opportunities for peace were ignored by the west—primarily the United States. The first was the ceasefire that was signed in October 1998. The member countries of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe were supposed to send in monitors. The total number, I believe, was supposed to be about 3,000, but they never reached their full complement. There were only about 1,300 at the time the bombing began. This is far below the 50,000 KFOR troops who are unable to keep the peace in Kosovo right now. Yet there is some evidence that they were effective.

• 0930

Mr. Roland Keith of Vancouver was one of the Canadian monitors and in fact headed one of the units. He has said on many occasions that during his time, he saw no signs of genocide or ethnic cleansing. According to him, there were some civilians being displaced because of terrorism, but there were no mass humanitarian problems until the NATO bombs came down.

Other OSCE sources had even stronger comments. The OSCE Parliamentary Assembly president, Willy Wimmer, is reported to have made a statement after the start of the bombing in which he charged the United States with doing everything, in compliance with Great Britain, to sabotage the OSCE plan for Kosovo. There was no report from the OSCE stating that its mission had been a failure before the bombs dropped, and I have not seen one to date.

Why could we not have increased the number of OSCE monitors? At a bare minimum, there might have been an increase in truthful reporting from Kosovo. The second missed opportunity for peace was the Rambouillet agreement itself. Our media abounded with reports that Yugoslavia was unwilling to accept a peace agreement and that all diplomatic channels had been exhausted. What was never widely reported was that the Serbs had accepted the political portion of the agreement, which gave a wide measure of autonomy to the province of Kosovo, including even the ability to conduct its own foreign policy. What Yugoslavia would not accept was a NATO occupying force free to move all over Serbia, not just over Kosovo, and a referendum on the status of Kosovo within three years.

There were indications right up until the day before the bombing that Serbia was willing to discuss having an international presence in Kosovo to monitor the accord, but not NATO. What would be wrong with that as a peace agreement? Why was it not acceptable?

Another reason that the war was wrong is that it was launched on manufactured evidence. A number of lies told by Albanian extremists are gradually coming to light. The worst, however, is the so-called Racak massacre, which the United States used as a pretext to launch the Rambouillet talks. It has been well documented in the French press—Le Figaro, Libération, and Le Monde—that this was a staged event.

The war was wrong because it supported terrorists. What is widely overlooked is that the Kosovo Liberation Army, the KLA, killed peace-loving Albanians as well as Serbians. One of the saddest stories for me is that of an Albanian mailman killed by the KLA for having a government job and delivering mail to Serbian homes as well as Albanian ones.

Today, with the KLA having free reign in Kosovo, it is reported that Albanian women, not just Serbian ones, are afraid to walk the streets of Pristina at night for fear of being kidnapped and sold into prostitution in Turkey.

A good question to be asked is why the west supported the KLA. Roger Faligot, writing in The European in September 1998, had a good article entitled “How Germany Backed the KLA”. Dr. Michel Chossudovsky of the University of Ottawa has also done considerable research into this, and I would recommend that the committee consider calling him as a witness.

If the west is truly interested in eliminating terrorism in our world, as I believe we should be, then why did it not help Yugoslavia to combat the KLA, instead of vice versa?

Finally, the war was wrong because it was hypocritical. Canadians were told that we were not at war, that the bombing was a humanitarian action. When 350,000 Serbians were driven out of Serbian Krajina by the Croatian army, there was no comparable humanitarian action to bomb Croatia. Instead, the United States and Germany helped the Croats.

• 0935

The war in Kosovo has created a great humanitarian crisis. The bombing of Yugoslavia has created this crisis, and Canada has played, sadly to say, a heavy role. Far from containing the crisis, the bombing spread it over a wider territory, affecting about 9 million more people.

An incomplete list of dead and wounded issued by the Yugoslav government in November 1999 gives the figures as 1,800 killed and 5,000 wounded. Over the 78 days of bombing, 18 Canadian CF-18s flew a total of 678 combat sorties for over 2,500 flying hours and delivered over 530 bombs.

We do not know which bombs they dropped. We can only hope that it was not a Canadian pilot who hit a passenger bus on a bridge, killing 60 people and injuring 13, and who came back a second time and hit the ambulance and injured the doctor who was attending to the victims. We hope that it was not a Canadian pilot who hit the television station, the column of Albanian refugees, or the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.

The targets were supposed to be only military ones, but clearly they were not. Much of what has euphemistically been called collateral damage has been rather severe and difficult to understand. Bombs were dropped on a marketplace in the city of Nis at noon on a market day. The Istok Penitentiary was bombed in several attacks on consecutive days, and 100 inmates were killed and 200 injured.

In April 1999 a bomb directed at a railroad bridge hit a passenger train, killing 55 people. In his explanation the next day, General Wesley Clarke, NATO's Supreme Commander, showed a videotape of the incident and explained that the pilot had no time to pull the missile off its target when he saw the train. However, in January 2000 the German daily, Frankfurter Rundschau, brought to light the fact that the videotape accompanying Clarke's presentation was shown at 2.7 times its actual speed. NATO admitted this.

For Canadians of Serbian descent this war has been tragic. They've had family members killed and injured or otherwise have been made to suffer. Also, the fact that our country, our government, has caused some of this destruction is very hard for us to bear. We have had great confidence in our country in the past, and we would like to renew it in the future.

One of the most frightening aspects of the bombing is the types of weapons that were used. These were radioactive depleted uranium weapons and cluster bombs. These weapons continue to kill for years after they have been dropped. The United States used A-10 Warthog jets in the Gulf War against Iraq and in Kosovo.

But Canada also bears a grave responsibility here. Although we have a policy that our uranium cannot be used in nuclear bombs, that policy does not extend to depleted uranium weapons. According to Dr. Rosalie Bertell, a world authority on the health effects of low-level radiation, Canada sends its uranium down to Paducah, Kentucky, to be enriched, and it does not ask for the return of the waste, which is in fact the depleted uranium. If that waste stays in the U.S. for 30 days, by law it becomes U.S. uranium. Therefore, Canada is providing the material for these deadly weapons.

According to Dr. Bertell, once fired and released, the depleted uranium stays in the ground for thousands of years and is picked up by the vegetation. It harms Albanians and our own troops on the ground as well as the Serbs. It also affects women and children more than men, women because their breast and uterine tissue is more sensitive to radiation, and children because they're closer to the ground and will incorporate more uranium into their bones as they grow.

• 0940

The cluster bombs also hold a particular danger for civilians. Each bomb contains 30 or 40 small bomblets, which scatter when the bomb is dropped. Many do not explode right away. Because they are brightly coloured, they are especially likely to be attractive and therefore dangerous to children. That would mean Albanian and Serbian children alike.

The physical and environmental damage throughout Yugoslavia is enormous. One hundred and forty-seven health care institutions were demolished or damaged, along with their equipment, medicines, and medical supplies. You can imagine the damage done to people whose operations were interrupted and medical equipment halted when power plants were bombed. More than 480 schools, university faculties, and facilities for students and children were damaged and destroyed, as well as more than 50 pre-school facilities.

The infrastructure of Yugoslavia has been destroyed. Transportation is very difficult because of the many bridges and roads that have been destroyed. Oil refineries, automobile plants, and chemical plants have been destroyed.

The situation with the chemical plants is the most serious of all. The most serious strike was the bombing of the chemical plant at Pancevo. It released tonnes of toxic chemicals into the atmosphere, such as PCBs and vinyl chloride monomers. Yugoslav scientists have determined that the strike against the refinery was not accidental because of the very precise initial bombing that disabled the entire petrochemical complex.

In addition to the environmental damage, a very large part of the catastrophe created by the bombing of Serbia is the fact that it greatly increased the number of refugees, Albanian, Serbian, and other nationalities as well. Considering that Serbia was already swollen with over 500,000 refugees from the wars in Krajina and Bosnia and has been under stringent sanctions for a very long time, this represented a huge challenge to it.

Since the peace agreement that was signed in June 1999, non-Albanians still, as you well know, continue to flow out of Kosovo. The Yugoslav foreign ministry estimates that 350,000 have been driven out. The majority of these are Serbs, but Gypsies, Jews, and Turks are also forced to flee, while the KLA, under the aegis of KFOR, proceeds to create an ethnically pure Albanian Kosovo.

Coming now to what we can do, Canada has pledged a package of $100 million of aid for new initiatives for Kosovo and the Balkans, but none of this was destined for the rest of Serbia. If we have true humanitarian spirit, I would implore you not to let the suffering in Serbia continue. The peace agreement has been signed. Why are we continuing the war? Canada should provide funds for aid and reconstruction to Serbia and press for the removal of sanctions.

The director general at the British Red Cross bemoaned the lack of funding to Serbia in December 1999. He stated that Yugoslavia currently has the largest refugee and displaced population in Europe and that its needs are once again being ignored. He pointed out that even before the Kosovo crisis, when Yugoslavia had over 500,000 identified refugees, there were over 300 humanitarian organizations in Bosnia, compared with only 27 in Yugoslavia.

We must also press our allies and work with them for the protection of the Serbs of Kosovo. Surely Serbian and other nationalities have the right to live in peace and to return to their homes in Kosovo. In the same vein, the Serbs of Krajina should have protection to return to their homes. It is inconceivable that we would have humanitarian concerns for everyone except the Serbs.

• 0945

Finally and most importantly, we must work for the return of international law and order. There is no security for any country in the world if individual leaders can make up the rules whenever it suits them. As Canadians, we must have an independent foreign policy that reflects our Canadian values. I realize that we are often members of international organizations, that we sign treaties and we need to live up to them, but we must not allow ourselves to be dragged into wars by NATO or any other organization. If the price of playing on the team becomes too high, maybe we should think about leaving the team.

Before I close, I would simply like to add that if there is any follow-up the committee desires, since I am here in Ottawa I would be happy to provide additional information or to come forward at any time in the future.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Madam Swann.

Mr. Trifkovic.

Mr. Srdja Trifkovic (Individual Presentation): The war waged by NATO against Yugoslavia in 1999 marks a significant turning point, not only for the United States and NATO but for the west as a whole. The principle of state sovereignty and the rule of law itself has been subverted in the name of an ideology that is allegedly humanitarian. Facts have been converted into fiction and even the fictions invoked to justify the act are giving up all pretence to credibility. All systems for the protection of national liberties—political, legal and economic—have now been subverted into vehicles for their own destruction. But so far from demonstrating the vigour of western ruling elites in a ruthless pursuit of an ideology of multi-ethnic democracy and international human rights, the whole sordid Balkan entanglement may serve as a disturbing revelation of those ruling elites' moral and cultural decay.

I shall therefore devote my remarks to the consequences of the war for the emerging new international system and ultimately for the security and stability of the western world itself.

Almost a decade separated Desert Storm from humanitarian bombing. In 1991 the Maastricht Treaty was signed and the rest of the decade has brought a gradual usurpation of traditional European sovereignty by a corporate-controlled Brussels regime of unelected bureaucrats who now feel bold enough to tell Austria how to run its domestic affairs. On this side of the ocean we had the passage of NAFTA, and in 1995 the Uruguay Round of GATT gave us the WTO. The nineties were thus a decade of gradual foundation laying for the new international order.

The denigration of sovereign nationhood hypnotized the public into applauding the dismantling of the very institutions that offer the only hope of representative government. The process is sufficiently far advanced for President Clinton to claim in his article, “A Just and Necessary War”, in the New York Times on May 23, 1999, that, had it not bombed Serbia, “NATO itself would have been discredited for failing to defend the very values that give it meaning. ”

The war was in fact both unjust and unnecessary, but the significance of Mr. Clinton's statement is that he has openly declared null and void the international system in existence ever since the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648. It was an imperfect and often-violated system, but nevertheless it provided the basis for international discourse from which only the assorted red and black totalitarians have openly deviated.

Since March 24, 1999, this has been replaced by the emerging Clinton doctrine, a carbon copy of the Brezhnev doctrine of limited sovereignty that supposedly justified the Soviet-led occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Like his Soviet predecessor, Mr. Clinton used an abstract and ideologically loaded notion, that of universal human rights, as the pretext to violate the law and tradition. The Clinton doctrine is rooted in the bipartisan hubris of Washington's foreign policy elite, tipsy on its own heady brew of the world's last and only superpower. Legal formalities are passé, and moral imperatives, never sacrosanct in international affairs anyway, are replaced by a cynical exercise in situational morality, dependent on an actor's position within the superpower's value system.

• 0950

And so imperial high-mindedness is back, but in a new form. Old religion, national flags, and nationalist rivalry play no part. But the yearning for excitement and importance that took the British to Peking and Kabul and Khartoum, the French to Fashoda and Saigon, and the Americans to Manila has now re-emerged. As a result, a war was waged on an independent nation because it refused foreign troops on its soil. All other justifications are ex post facto rationalizations. The powers that waged that war have aided and abetted secession by ethnic minorities, secession that, once formally effected, will render many European borders tentative. In the context of any other European nation, the story would sound surreal. The Serbs, however, have been demonized to the point where they must not presume to be treated like others.

But the fact that the west could do anything it chose to do to the Serbs does not explain why it should. It is hardly worth refuting yet again the feeble excuses for intervention. The humanitarian argument we've all heard before. But what about Kashmir and Sudan, Uganda, Angola, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Algeria? Properly videotaped and “Amanpourized”, each would be good for a dozen Kosovos. There was no “genocide”, of course. Compared to the killing fields of the third world, Kosovo was an unremarkable low-intensity conflict, uglier perhaps than Northern Ireland a decade ago, but much less so than Kurdistan in our NATO ally Turkey. A total of 2,000 fatalities on all sides in Kosovo until June 1999, in a province of over two million, favourably compares to the annual homicide tally of 450 in Washington, D.C., population 600,000. Counting corpses is poor form, of course, but bearing in mind the brutalities and ethnic cleansing ignored by NATO, or even condoned, notably in Croatia in 1995 or in eastern Turkey, it is clear that Kosovo is not about universal principles. In Washington, Abdullah Ocalan is a terrorist, but the KLA are freedom fighters.

What was it about, then? “Regional stability”, we were told next. If we didn't stop the conflict, it would engulf Macedonia, Greece, Turkey, the whole of the Balkans in fact, with much of Europe to follow. But the cure, bombing Serbia into detaching an ethnically pure Albanian Kosovo to the KLA narco-mafia under NATO's benevolent eye, will unleash a chain reaction throughout the ex-communist half of Europe. Its first victim will be the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, where the restive Albanian minority comprises a third of the total population. And will the Pristina model not be demanded by the Hungarians in Romania, where they are more numerous than Kosovo's Albanians, and in southern Slovakia? What will stop the Russians in the Ukraine, Moldova, Estonia, and northern Kazakhstan from following suit, or the Serbs and Croats in the chronically unstable and unviable Dayton Bosnia? And finally, when the Albanians get their secession on the grounds of their numbers, will the same apply when the Latinos in southern California or Texas eventually outnumber their Anglo neighbours and start demanding bilingual statehood leading to reunification with Mexico, and are Russia and China to threaten the U.S. with bombing if Washington doesn't comply?

NATO has won for now, but the west has lost. The war has undermined the very principles that constitute the west, namely the rule of law. The notion of human rights can never provide the basis for either the rule of law or morality. Universal human rights detached from any rootedness in time and place will be open to the latest whim of outrage or the latest fad for victimhood. The misguided effort to transform NATO from a defensive alliance into a mini-UN with out-of-area self-appointed responsibilities is a certain road to more Bosnias, more Kosovos down the line. Now that the “Clintonistas” and NATO were successful in Kosovo, we can expect new and even more dangerous adventures elsewhere, but next time around the Russians, Chinese, Indians, and others will know better than to buy the malarkey about free markets and democratic human rights, and the future of the west in the eventual inevitable conflict may be uncertain.

Canada should ponder the implications of this course and gather the courage to say no to the next joyride in global interventionism for its own sake and for the sake of peace and stability in the world. Is it really obliged to watch in undissenting submission as a long, dangerous military experiment is mounted that will lead us to a real war for central Asia? Will it soon be defending new KLAs against new genocides along Russia's Islamic rim, among ethnic groups as yet unknown to the western press that could provide a series of excuses for intervention, all as good, that is as bad, as the Kosovo Albanian excuse?

• 0955

Was Canada's imperial history so sweet that it must seek another imperial command centre, in Washington this time, to compensate for the loss of the one in London? Does Canada feel comfortable with the emerging truth that it has less freedom of choice about war and peace today than it did as a free dominion under the old Statute of Westminster? There can be no doubt that the war NATO was fighting in April and May 1999 was not intended or willed by anything that can be called an alliance, when the use of force was plotted inside the Beltway in 1998.

It is worth asking how far this reacquisition of minor imperial status by Canada and other NATO members is creating a media-led political process that leaves national decision-making meaningless beyond a formal cheerleading function. It is also worth asking how it came to be that the chief war aim of NATO was keeping the alliance together, what disciplines it implies, and how easily and how bloodily it can be repeated.

The moral absolutism that was invoked by the proponents of intervention as a substitute for rational argument can no longer be sustained. Genuine dilemmas about our human responsibility for one another must not be used to reactivate the viral imperialism of the re-extended west. The more arrogant the new doctrine, the greater the willingness to lie for the truth. To be capable of “doing something” sustains moral self-respect, if we can suppress the thought that we are not so much moral actors as consumers of pre-digested choices.

At the onset of the new millennium, we are living in a virtual coliseum, where exotic and nasty troublemakers can be killed not by lions but by the magical flying machines of the imperium. As the candidates for punishment or martyrdom are pushed into the arena, many denizens of the west react to the show as imperial consumers, not as citizens with a parliamentary right and a democratic duty to question the proceedings.

May the results of your present inquiry prove me wrong. Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you, sir. I promise you the present inquiry will not go back to the Peace of Westphalia. I appreciate very much the scholarship of your intervention. Thank you.

Mr. Dyer, sir. Thank you for coming. I believe you come from London.

Mr. Gwynne Dyer (Individual presentation): Yes, via Toronto.

What I want to do is simply raise what I think are the four issues that most urgently need attention as a consequence of the intervention in Kosovo. We can obviously go into the origins and motives and so on later, but let's deal with the aftermath. I think it's the most urgent question. I will just name the four issues and leave it to you to pick them up afterwards. I want to describe what I think they are and what is the most urgent aspect.

The first is UNMIK, as we call it, and the administration of Kosovo in the eight months since the end of the war, which has been a mitigated disaster. Of the 6,000 police that Bernard Kouchner, the administrator, asked for, only 2,000 have arrived as yet. The transport isn't that slow; they simply.... Indeed his own government, the French government, hasn't provided any police yet. As a result of that, plus the understandable difficulties in putting together an administrative council with both Serbian- and Albanian-speaking Kosovo residents on it—the plan was for three Kosovars and one Serb—has meant that until this month, and indeed down to now, there has been no local administration whatever.

So this entire province of two million people, with all of its difficulties, is being administered entirely by foreigners. Neither are there any locally appointed judges, nor has there been, until very recently, any agreement even on which legal code will be enforced by the police who aren't there, by the judges who have not yet been appointed.

It is hardly surprising in these circumstances that Kosovo closely resembles the state of nature. Although the numbers of killings of Serbs by Albanians, and to a lesser but significant degree of Albanians by Serbs, have decreased over the months, we are talking about between 400 and 700 Serbians killed in the last eight months. A significant proportion of them, though not all by any means, have been killed for the crime of being Serbian. This is not an acceptable outcome of a war that was fought to prevent ethnic cleansing.

• 1000

Last week five Albanians were killed by grenades in the northern side of the town of Kosovska Mitrovica, the one town in Kosovo where there is still a mixed population. Though mixed, it's divided by the river, and the attempts of the Serbs to drive out the remaining Albanians living north of the river continue despite the efforts of French troops to intervene. They've just been reinforced by German and Italian troops.

The enforcement even of peace, in the broadest sense that people are unlikely to be shot by their neighbours, despite the presence of 40,000 KFOR troops, has been spotty at best. This is a problem that can to some extent be solved by throwing money at it. The money, or the human resources the money would pay for, has not been made available by the people who.... We're talking about the cost of two or three days' bombing.

I think that is the most urgent issue by far. Whatever you think about the beginnings of this, the outcome has been deplorable. And this is a preventable disaster. If you believe such interventions are desirable in certain circumstances, in the future your first duty also is to ensure that this one does not end by discrediting the entire idea of humanitarian intervention.

The second issue arising is clearly impacts in the Balkans. Promises were made throughout the neighbouring countries of rapid access to the European Union as a reward for placing their territory, or at least their diplomatic support, at our disposal in the course of the war. We needed Hungary to refuse the Russians transit rides, we needed the Romanians not to object when cruise missiles landed on their territory by accident, and so on. These promises were made to the Bulgars, to the Romanians, and to the Hungarians, who of course were already in the queue for entry into the European Union, but they were promised acceleration. Indeed, vaguer but still substantial promises were made to Macedonia, which had never previously been considered as a potential member. Croatia was suggested, perhaps under new leadership and so on, and new leadership has now emerged.

We have seen a first step towards fulfilling these promises in the late 1999 decision of the European Union to expand its queue of potential members from six to twelve, including of course Turkey as well as the immediate neighbours of Kosovo and former Yugoslavia.

This is an issue that will be with us for some time. I am not suggesting this is an evil outcome of the war, but it is an extremely complex one. These countries live at very different levels of development economically and indeed politically. Some of them, like Hungary, clearly have relatively little difficulty in fulfilling the requirements of European Union membership. They have a reasonably well-functioning democratic political system, and the transition to a free market economy has been accomplished relatively rapidly and painlessly, although many Hungarians would disagree with the last adjective. Romania is about as plausible a candidate for rapid European Union membership as, let us say, Cambodia.

The difficulties the European Union will face in expanding are going to be considerable. The net result may be to delay the expansion of the European Union into those areas where it would be relatively non-problematic. They have addressed this issue to some extent by announcing that henceforward the applicants will not proceed in convoy for a joint arrival, but will be allowed to forge ahead on the membership applications at their own speed. So we will have, hypothetically, twelve different moments at which the European Union expands rather than one grand jamboree.

• 1005

The other issue arising from this, to which some attention could be paid, is that in central Europe—and Austria stands as the most striking example of this—we are looking at a very severe popular reaction to the prospect that all the countries of eastern and southeastern Europe effectively will have the right of residence, once they've joined the European Union, in Germany, Austria, and so on, an inevitable necessary consequence of European Union membership. But I do ask you to consider how the Austrians, who may be wrong but feel very strongly on this matter, regard the prospect of anybody from Romania or Turkey who feels like it taking up residence in Salzburg.

The Chair: Although they don't mind the fact that they can move to France if they feel like it.

Mr. Gwynne Dyer: Exactly, indeed. I'm not supporting Haider in this; I'm saying you have a complication here.

The Chair: You don't necessarily want the other folks getting the same advantage as you have once you're in the club.

Mr. Gwynne Dyer: This is known as “pulling the ladder up”, and it's an ancient tradition.

The third aspect is the future of this kind of intervention. What we have done is create expectations, both in our own population and in the world at large, that when massacres occur, when genocide appears imminent, we will go and stop it. This, while laudable in theory, is impossible in practice, because you cannot do it every time.

We operated in this war with a self-denying ordinance that we wouldn't get any of our soldiers killed. It led to a severely distorted strategy, and it had entirely to do with the conviction of the governments of NATO that their populations wouldn't stand for casualties. I refer to the famous “Mogadishu line”, also known as the “Dover criterion” inside the Beltway in Washington, that no U.S. military intervention will be undertaken overseas for humanitarian purposes if it is likely to cause 20 American deaths—a lesson drawn from Mogadishu, where 19 Americans died one afternoon. And they left by the weekend.

The political support for this sort of thing, however strongly people may feel about the pictures they see on the television, is sufficiently fragile that it is the kind of operation that can only be undertaken when casualties are predictably very low on our side. This means that if you support the principle of intervention, you must also exercise a great deal of inconsistency—inconsistency is always a virtue—in the interventions you choose to make.

It is manifestly ridiculous to propose an intervention to save the Chechens from the Russians. There are 150 million Russians, and they have nuclear weapons. If they were conducting a full-scale genocide, which they are not, it would still be a very difficult call—and I think one we would finally refuse—to undertake military action against Russia, and all the more so for China and Tibet, and so on, the other examples that are adduced to suggest that we shouldn't have done it where we could because we don't do it where we can't.

I wouldn't argue that. I would argue that you must do it where it is necessary and feasible. Indeed, this is the argument that was made by Tony Blair in Chicago at the height of the war, when he suggested that we did have a partial doctrine of intervention here.

Let me leave that, because I think there's much to be said but I don't want to say it right now. If you want to go into it, we can.

The final observation I would make is that we have severely muddied the waters in international law. We went to war illegally, because the only justifications for going to war under international law as defined by the UN charter are if we have been attacked and are acting in self-defence, clearly not the case in Serbia, or if we have the authorization of the United Nations, which we did not have and didn't ask for because we knew we wouldn't get it. We acted on what we allege was the higher principle of human rights.

There is substantial practical justification for that point of view, and there is some legal justification in the sense that there is a contrary, or at least separate, body of post-war international law, the convention against genocide of 1948, supplemented by subsequent laws like the convention against torture of 1977, all of which suppose a right and indeed a duty of intervention even if the UN doesn't authorize it. It's very striking, for example, that in 1995 the U.S. government refused for two months to voice the word “genocide” with regard to Rwanda, the most open-and-shut case of the decade, because to say “genocide” triggered the obligation to intervene to stop it.

• 1010

What we therefore have now is, right out in the open, the UN charter versus the convention against genocide, and so on, and what we have chosen to do is pick amongst them according to the case. I think we will probably continue to choose between them as suits our purposes for the moment, for the long-term task needs to be to reconcile these two partially contradictory bodies of international law.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Dyer.

I want to thank all the panellists for a very helpful and very thorough examination of both the past and, to some extent, hopefully, what we can be doing in the future to help solve some of the huge problems in the area.

I have on my list Mr. Strahl, Mr. Robinson, and Mr. McWhinney.

Mr. Strahl, we'll have to go to ten-minute interventions the first time around, and then we'll go to five-minute interventions.

Mr. Chuck Strahl (Fraser Valley, Ref.): Certainly.

I thank all the panellists for their presentations. It's a very interesting subject, as has been said, especially to decide where we go from here.

To start, I have a couple of questions specifically for Mr. Dyer.

When you talk about the future of our interventionist role, I'm interested in whether we're talking about Canada's role, or about the west, or NATO, or the UN, or what exactly that is. It does seem to me that Canada has a very limited military capacity, if intervention is a military thing, in support of human rights violations. It does seem that we almost always have to rely on the United States because we just don't have what it takes to deliver the goods. So as someone else has suggested, we are at the beck and call of the U.S. because we don't have the chutzpah to actually put stuff on the ground ourselves.

I know you have argued in your writing in the past that international interventions on human rights grounds are going to be an increasing role for the international community, but do you feel that Canada's military capabilities are limiting our ability to pick and choose those fights? We basically pick the ones in which the Americans say we have a chance.

Mr. Gwynne Dyer: I would partly dispute that. Certainly in the case of Kosovo we followed the Americans and the British, who took point on this, particularly the British—they were always out in front on this—and to a lesser extent the French. Given the location of that quarrel in Europe, actually on NATO's doorstep, it was very likely to be done through NATO, and given where the larger members of NATO other than the United States are, it was inevitable that they would in a sense take point on this issue.

If you compare the intervention in East Timor this past autumn, which also involved...not in this case bombing Indonesia; that would not have made much sense. It was never clear that the Indonesian government, rather than elements in the armed forces, were carrying out that massacre and the forced deportation of the East Timor population. But following the application of enormous economic pressures on Indonesia, the creation and dispatch of that peacekeeping force to East Timor to carry out a job not dissimilar to the one that KFOR is carrying out in Kosovo was far from being an American initiative. Throughout the entire process, the Americans brought up the end of the parade.

Indeed, for the first two weeks when we were putting that peacekeeping force together, President Clinton was still saying there would not be Americans in it. The Australians, obviously as the nearest country, were providing the largest number of troops, but we had committed ours before the Americans had committed theirs. This is also true of several European countries and several Asian countries, the Philippines and South Korea particularly. So circumstances alter cases.

I certainly agree that if you're operating in Europe or in the Americas, it is almost inevitable that the larger members of NATO will take the lead, and that intervention is almost unimaginable without American consent, if not outright leadership. In other areas of the world this is less clear-cut. There are a number of areas in the world where Canadian troops are present under different auspices, as in the UN, or where they are present with American troops, as in East Timor, but by no means under the command or a moral leadership or a political compulsion coming from the United States.

• 1015

The restructuring of the Canadian Forces, which is envisaged and is by no means fully complete yet, not even the plan, certainly contemplates a larger proportion of our forces being available for these tasks and a much smaller proportion being available for the classic northern European battleground that we spent the sixties, seventies and eighties preparing for. The present overstretch is enormous. The Canadian Forces are presently stretched so thinly you can practically see daylight through them. They're stretched thinly particularly because they lack ground troops, which, above all, is what is required in these interventions. The restructuring will take care of some of that, one hopes, though one hasn't yet seen a detailed plan.

Mr. Chuck Strahl: I agree with you. Let's hope so. I do hope that future budgets and the ongoing reorganization of our military does recognize the need to have a strong Canadian military for those reasons. We may not always get it right, but we can't get it wrong or right if we don't have the ability to make some of those interventions.

I am interested in getting the perspective of the panellists on the role they see the International Criminal Court playing in this post-intervention period. Basically I'm wondering whether the ICC is the right way to go or whether international war tribunals that zero in on a conflict or an area under the direction of the UN are a better way to go. Is the ICC part of the answer, or is it going to become, as some people fear, a catch basin for a bucketful of problems that may or may not ever get solved? In other words, is it more of a bureaucratic thing than a problem-solving thing?

The Chair: We've heard about the ICC and so we're very interested in that question. You ask whether or not it will just be a bureaucratic problem. It seems to me we have to look at the broader picture. By its existence it could create the threat of war crimes.

Mr. Chuck Strahl: And that's what I would like to know. It does seem to me that there is a two-edged sword, and that's the reason I'm interested in this perspective.

The ICC, on that first blush, sounds like the right thing to have in place. As intervention is targeted in places where we can actually do it and where it's necessary and plausible—your point, Mr. Dyer—my concern is that the ICC will cast its net so broadly that I fear it will be not only where it may not be necessary, but also where it's entirely unenforceable. It then becomes not the effective enforcement agency, but something that's used for political purposes to get your issue de jour front and centre.

So that's why I wonder if that's part of the answer or not.

The Chair: Before Mr. Dyer responds, Mr. McWhinney, did you have a quick question?

Mr. Ted McWhinney (Vancouver Quadra, Lib.): We should make it clear that the International Criminal Court is not yet in existence. The statute requires 60 ratifications.

Mr. Strahl, I think probably your references are to ad hoc UN war crimes tribunals on Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

Mr. Chuck Strahl: No, I am talking about the proposal. I realize it's not in place, but there's certainly been much—

Mr. Ted McWhinney: Sixty ratifications may be a long time away.

The Chair: Mr. Strahl made it very clear in his question. Are we better to stick with the ad hoc types that already exist or are we better to go to the ICC? So I understand what you're trying to get at, because we're all trying to grapple with this.

Mr. Dyer.

Mr. Gwynne Dyer: It not only doesn't yet exist, but even after 60 ratifications and its constitution, it doesn't have American participation, which is a major problem. There is a sense that this will probably come. There's been a pattern established through the late eighties and nineties in which the Americans frequently don't sign an international document at first, but you wait 10 years, the administration rolls over, and eventually they do sign up. This is the principle we proceeded on in the landmines treaty, for example.

• 1020

So assuming that it will indeed come into existence and even that there will be American participation in it, clearly the timetable for that does not admit that it be the instrument used to deal with current problems, that is to say, this and last year's problems. The question is broader than that. It's about whether a bureaucratic monster is what we are building here and whether targeted ad hoc interim tribunals on specific problems are better.

My answer would be that intuitively, because there is no evidence, the ad hoc tribunals can only ever be created after the fact. You have to have the disaster in order to know you need the tribunal, so that you're playing catch-up always in these circumstances.

Therefore, in principle, a court that exists that can take action or at least recommend action in the early stages of a developing problem that might turn into a genocide is going to be a preferable instrument, provided it doesn't get too big for its boots. We aren't going to play global policemen everywhere all the time, and a court that pretends somebody will do that for it is not a useful instrument.

On the other hand, there are promising developments in areas like the enforcement of the convention against torture with the arrest of General Pinochet and the subsequent travel aversion of many other retired dictators. This suggests that centralizing this kind of law enforcement in a standing body will be a very fruitful way of inducing some, how shall we say, political discipline in the world.

The Chair: Leave it to every national court to decide if they're going to—

Mr. Gwynne Dyer: That's right. This is what we're doing at the moment. National courts do have the right and the duty to enforce international law, but it's very ad hoc. Generally speaking, for example, Suharto didn't go to Germany this August because he would have been arrested, although he has gone there for the last thirty years for medical treatment. Mugabe had to flee Johannesburg in December when the Ethiopian government found he was there for medical treatment. It is getting done, but it is getting done in a very ad hoc way, and it would be preferable that this were centralized.

The Chair: Mr. Trifkovic.

Mr. Srdja Trifkovic: I am somewhat puzzled by the clear-cut choice between the ICC and ad hoc tribunals as the only alternatives we are facing. To me it sounds a bit like the choice between cancer and leukemia.

I do not believe that bureaucratically structured and politically motivated international quasi-judicial bodies are either desirable or feasible in any proper sense of the tribunal as an impartial forum for the administration of justice. If the kangaroo court that goes by the name of The Hague tribunal in former Yugoslavia is any indicator, the lesson of that particular august body is that its model of justice is Moscow in 1938 and not Nuremberg in 1946. It was formed on the basis of a purely political agenda by the Security Council on the basis of chapter 7. The way it has run the show in terms of its procedures, its rule of evidence, the selection of people to be indicted and prosecuted, and finally in terms of its refusal to indict and prosecute people who at prima facie should be, such as the leaders of the 19 NATO countries, only indicate it is a political body par excellence. There is no reason at all why an ICC would be any different.

Obviously, if you have the likes of Clinton and Blair deciding what is necessary and feasible in terms of intervention, ultimately they would be deciding what is necessary and feasible in terms of prosecution. The kind of political discipline in the world that it would impose is eerily reminiscent of the Brave New World of Huxley and the 1984 of Orwell.

I suspect that bodies such as the ones that you are mentioning will only take us a step further in the direction of global totalitarianism in which the local and national traditions of law and justice and jurisprudence, which are meaningful because they have evolved within the context of a genuine, authentic, autonomous national culture, will be replaced by something that is global, something that is allegedly universal and therefore, of necessity, ideological.

• 1025

The Chair: Okay.

Ms. Radmila Swann: May I?

The Chair: I'm sorry; we're going to have to move on, though it's a very fascinating discussion.

I have to leave you with the thought that you always have to answer alternatives, so I'll come to you and ask, what's your alternative? My alternative is there are going to be United States imperial courts applying their jurisdiction around the world to enforce it, so that may be worse for you. Anyway, that's just a reflection—

Mr. Srdja Trifkovic: My alternative is to rediscover the beauty of a society of nations in which enlightened national interests, based upon the golden rule of “I will not deny to anyone what I am asking for myself”, will be the basis of law and the basis of international relations.

I am not claiming it is a long-lost golden age, say in Europe between 1815 and 1914, that we ought to yearn for in terms of reactionary nostalgia. I'm simply saying that what we are offered as a replacement in the Blairites' and Clintonistas' brave new world is infinitely worse and infinitely more frightening.

The Chair: Well, okay.

Mr. Chuck Strahl: Well, you asked, Mr. Chair. You did ask.

Voices: Oh, oh!

The Chair: That's right; I asked. We got to 1939, and so far we've avoided that.

Now we'll move on to Mr. Robinson.

Mr. Svend J. Robinson (Burnaby—Douglas, NDP): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I want to thank all three witnesses for their very compelling evidence. I have a couple of questions, but I just want to follow up, if I may, with Mr. Dyer and ask for his comments, in some senses responding to Mr. Trifkovic, on the ad hoc tribunal, because certainly I share many of the concerns he has raised.

When one looks at some of the deliberate decisions that were made by NATO with respect to targeting.... For example, Ms. Swann mentioned the incident of the attack on the train. NATO has said it was too late to avoid the bomb; they only saw it at the last minute. They sped up the film, but they only saw it at the last minute. What seems to have been overlooked is that there was a second attack after the first one. The question obviously is, if they couldn't avoid the first one, they sure as hell could have avoided the second one. So there was a deliberate second hit on a train, and 55 innocent people died.

There was an attack on a bridge in Varvarin, not in the middle of the night but in broad daylight. Many, many innocent people died going to a market.

Or the use of cluster bombs.... When I was in Kosovo I was taken to a particular location where the remains of some of these bombs were. It was a farm field with children around.

A pretty compelling and powerful case can be made that this was not some sort of terrible mistake, but some deliberate targeting decisions were made here that resulted in the loss of civilian lives. We're going to be hearing from Professor Mandell later, who is seeking to have accountability for this before the ad hoc tribunal, but I wonder if Mr. Dyer could perhaps comment and respond to the criticism that's been made—which is one, frankly, that I share—about the quality of justice that is being dispensed in an ad hoc tribunal of this nature and whether indeed it shouldn't be looking as well at crimes that may very well have been committed by NATO in the conduct of this war.

Mr. Gwynne Dyer: The one I actually have the strongest doubts about is the attack on the television centre, which, it has occurred to me on some occasions, is unquestionably a decision that was taken not by some pilot.

Even if you slow the film down to its original speed.... Pilots operating in a hostile air environment may not actually have the right priorities in their minds, morally speaking. “Get your weapon off the wing and get out of here” tends to be the operating principle—“Don't hang around the target area”, all that stuff.

But the strike on the television centre certainly needs further attention. It wasn't just the makeup lady who died. About 15 technicians died. And contrary to most of the other strikes we made on Serbian government buildings, where we practically phoned them up.... Obviously there was nobody working there. They'd left on the first day of the war. But we rang them up and said “Get the night watchman out. The Serbian interior ministry building is the target tonight.”

By and large we conducted the war with a very heavy emphasis on avoiding civilian casualties, if only for the pragmatic reason that they play very badly on television. The Human Rights Watch survey suggests that the number of Serbian civilians who died in the war was in the vicinity of 500. Given the amount of ordnance used, that does suggest a great deal of overall attempts to minimize civilian casualties. But then you do have the striking instances where a political decision was made, clearly quite near the top. Those targeting decisions went a long way up the chain of command. These are issues that do require inquiry.

• 1030

Mr. Svend Robinson: When you say inquiry—

Mr. Gwynne Dyer: I mean to say there ought to be.... I'm not stating that a war crime was committed, but an investigation as to whether a crime was committed, whether the law of war was broken, is reasonable to request.

On the whole, if you read the Human Rights Watch report—and it's an interesting document—it does not suggest massive abuses of the laws of war by NATO, but it does suggest there were instances that are worthy of investigation. And they should, in all equity, be investigated. NATO itself should be investigating them, frankly. It shouldn't be waiting for the international tribunal to do it. I would very much like to see us do it.

But I don't think there was an overall policy of either breaking the laws of war or targeting civilians. For propaganda reasons, certain bridges across the Danube that had no visible military use were taken down—a very counterproductive policy, because the Danube is still blocked today—and the television centre was another case in point. On the whole, the targeting was fairly careful and within the rules of law.

Mr. Svend Robinson: Well, again, we could have a discussion about that. I also walked through the rubble in Pristina of another mistake by NATO, in fact with a doctor whose mother-in-law was one of the people who died. It was a postal facility, a communications facility, in downtown Pristina. This was another accident. But I appreciate your agreement that the ad hoc tribunal should be looking into these areas as well.

I'd like to ask Ms. Swann if she could perhaps talk a bit more about the current situation, particularly in Kosovo, and the apparent complete failure to implement the provisions of United Nations resolution 1244.

I had a couple sitting in front of my desk in my constituency office whose elderly aunt went out to the market in Pristina—she was of Serbian origin—and when she came back home, her apartment was occupied by Kosovars of Albanian origin, who told her, “Out, and you're not coming back. That's it.” This has happened too many times. There have been too many deaths. And UN resolution 1244 is essentially a dead letter.

But I wonder if perhaps Ms. Swann could elaborate on what she sees as the current situation in Kosovo, and more important, because this committee has to make recommendations to the government, what role can and should we, as one of the countries involved there now, be playing? Maybe with more resources, but what should we be doing to seek more effective enforcement of resolution 1244?

Ms. Radmila Swann: Thank you.

In my presentation in fact I didn't dwell enough upon the suffering of the people in Kosovo right now. We have here in Ottawa a young woman who has relatives in Kosovska Mitrovica. This is the area that is divided. The Serbs are the majority in the northern part of the city and the Albanians are the majority in the south, but there are also Albanian Kosovars in the north.

She has an uncle who is working in the hospital in Kosovska Mitrovica as a doctor right now. The power plant that controls the power for the whole city of Kosovska Mitrovica is located in the southern portion, in the Albanian sector. The Albanians turn off the power whenever they feel like it. There is no steady supply of fuel, of electricity, or of water to that hospital. The hospital is lacking in all kinds of medical equipment. You can imagine what this means, to be in the middle of treating a patient and all of a sudden you have no electricity; all of a sudden you have no water coming into the hospital.

• 1035

The same young woman told me that her cousin, an 18-year-old boy, was injured. He was playing basketball in front of his house with three of his relatives. A young Albanian boy—and this is important; these are children. We think we have problems here with the Young Offenders Act. Children in Europe are causing great problems as well. This was a young boy of 10 or 12 years old who came by and threw a bomb into the basketball game. Her cousin has barely survived. He had life-threatening injuries. One of the other boys was less injured.

The people in Mitrovica know exactly who threw that bomb. They told the KFOR. They told the police. Nothing was done. They also know which Albanian threw a bomb into a café and killed several Serbian people. Nothing was done. They are very discouraged.

I was also told that the Serbians in Mitrovica went to the KFOR and said “You must protect us. If you don't, we will have to drive these remaining Albanians out of the city, because we really have no choice. We can't live like this.” The result was that very same evening there were planes and helicopters sent over the Albanian area, to protect the Albanians, to make sure the Serbs wouldn't drive them out—but no additional protection for the Serbians.

There are many stories. In Gnjilane, the remaining Serbs are in the church. Pregnant women are giving birth in the church. They can't go out. It is absolutely dreadful.

I think all of you will remember too the unfortunate story...well, it's not a story; it's a fact. An employee of the United Nations was killed simply for speaking Serbian in Pristina. This is disastrous.

In terms of what we can do for the future, I would think it would be very important to begin to allow some Serbian police back into Kosovo. It was understood in the agreement that was signed in June that there would be Serbian police to protect the Serbian areas. There would be Serbian police to guard the border. I think that would be the beginning.

Mr. Svend Robinson: That was part of resolution 1244.

Ms. Radmila Swann: Exactly. That would be the beginning of two signals. It would be an encouraging signal to the Serbians before they all have to leave that, yes, somebody does care about them; there will be some protection here.

The second thing is that it would be a signal too to the extremist Albanians. I want to say extremist Albanians because I think it's important to leave it on the record that the Serbians do not hate the Albanians. It is the terrorists. It is the KLA that we are talking about here. I would like to just remind the committee that there are many thousands of Albanians who are living happily in Serbia. I don't know how happy they are with the sanctions, but they are not being persecuted. This is the important thing.

It would give a message to the Albanians that they do not have free reign in Kosovo.

An hon. member: That's one helpful suggestion. Thank you.

The Chair: A point of order? I'm afraid we're well over our time on that one.

Mr. Chuck Strahl: I'm getting kind of a steady flurry of stuff being passed out here, and I don't really know who it's from, where it's coming from, or who is responsible for it. Some of it is—-

The Chair: It's an attempt to destabilize you, Mr. Strahl. It's a political plot.

Mr. Chuck Strahl: It may be. You're assuming there's some stability to begin with. I wonder if we could just know where....

The Clerk: Everything but this is from the witnesses, and this is from somebody in the audience.

Mr. Chuck Strahl: Okay.

Mr. Srdja Trifkovic: I'm responsible for this particular book because I was told that you people don't have a full text of the Rambouillet diktat.

The Chair: We do. We've had it. That's something witnesses have been saying. We've had it for a long time, and it was discussed when we were debating—

Mr. Chuck Strahl: That's good. The book came from him. That came from somebody in the audience.

• 1040

Mr. Srdja Trifkovic: Also the magazine called Chronicles has an article of mine.

Mr. Chuck Strahl: And that's from you as well then.

Mr. Srdja Trifkovic: Yes.

Mr. Chuck Strahl: Okay. I'm much happier now. I have some context here.

The Chair: Well, we don't want to corrupt you with too much information.

Mr. Chuck Strahl: It's fine. The pictures aren't big enough. I'm okay.

The Chair: Okay. We're going to move on then to Mr. McWhinney.

Mr. Ted McWhinney: By the way, we do have the text from the Rambouillet accord. We have studied it in detail, so let's pass on. Some witness indiscreetly said she hadn't read it and hadn't had it available. It's just not so.

Now let me just say in opening that I understand the problems Gwynne Dyer rightly referred to with the International Criminal Court. It's a Kathleen, Mavourneen situation. It may be now, it may be never, but I don't think we should denigrate the ad hoc tribunal on Rwanda or Yugoslavia. There have been significant changes in the personnel of the court. It no longer is a reflex of the NATO member countries. I know two of the judges very well. Shahabuddeen from Guyana is one of the most thoughtful jurists and an ex-member of the World Court. He's on it. Wang Tieya, who was chased from his office in China by the Gang of Four during the Cultural Revolution, is there. These are interesting people. And the new prosecutor is a professional, a Swiss attorney general. She's a very capable lady.

There are some interesting cases involving Canadian lawyers before that tribunal, so maybe we should wait a little bit and see what happens.

Let's get on, though, to Ms. Swann. I appreciated her comments, and I'd like to assure her it's not part of Canadian government policy to demonize any part of our community. My constituency had a meeting of, I estimate, about 1,000 people. My friend Svend Robinson and I debated this issue. We are very happy to have views legitimately expressed by all members of our community. So we value your appearance and the very temperate way in which you have presented your sometimes very searing recommendations.

Let me ask you this, if I may. You would be aware that there was a change in, you might say, the jurisdiction of the Kosovo operation during its course. You would be aware that the Canadian foreign minister made a visit to Moscow in company with the Greek foreign minister. And you would be aware, following on that, of the St. Petersburg declaration with the G-8 countries. The operation moved from NATO to G-8, and then resolution 1244 was firmly and completely under the jurisdiction of the United Nations. Let us be clear on that. The Security Council voted, the Chinese abstained, but everybody else, including the Russians, voted for it.

So we have a legal base for present operations under UN aegis, and there was a strong Canadian initiative there. You would be aware of that, I think, and undoubtedly would welcome that development. Correct?

Ms. Radmila Swann: I don't believe this took place before the bombing started on March 24.

Mr. Ted McWhinney: No, I'm speaking of Canadian policies. I think we can simply state as a matter of public record that the Canadian government worked very actively with other countries to bring the matter under full UN control and authority. It's not the same as obviously saying from the beginning it's there, but you would not put at issue the Canadian role there, which partly responded to representations from community organizations like your own.

Ms. Radmila Swann: I'm sorry, I'm having a little trouble hearing you, Mr. McWhinney.

I recall that Mr. Axworthy, when he first spoke, said that this was not a war; this was a humanitarian action. Surely, our Canadian government knew what it was doing at that time and that bombing Serbia was not a humanitarian action.

We were involved quite heavily right from the beginning. I'm not sure exactly what our Canadian diplomats said or what influence they could have had. I suspect very little at the negotiations in Rambouillet. It was all controlled by the United States. The very troubling point for me is the fact that when Serbia—Yugoslavia—showed itself willing to sign a peace agreement at Rambouillet, this was denied. I think whatever influence was at our disposal should have been used at that time to declare our position with our allies.

• 1045

Mr. Ted McWhinney: We were not part of the Rambouillet process, as you know, but you would not certainly put aside the role that organizations like your own, legitimately expressing their views, have made in producing the Canadian, Greek, and other initiatives to return this matter to the full legal authority and control of the United Nations in resolution 1244. In your view, that surely is a positive step, correct?

Ms. Radmila Swann: I feel that our communities were not allowed sufficient access to our members of Parliament. We did not have sufficient opportunities to express our points of view.

I realize that members of Parliament are not responsible for the press, but we did not have access to the media either. There were only a few opportunities. We found that maybe one out of ten letters we wrote was published. When we sent press releases saying we were having teach-ins or having demonstrations, they were very often not reported at all.

I remember trying to visit my own member of Parliament at the time of the bombing. It was in the middle of the bombing. I have seen him on other occasions, but on this particular occasion I was told that I would not be able to see him for about six weeks because he was out of the country. That's a very long time in the middle of bombing when you would like to express a view that it ought to stop.

That same evening, I saw my member of Parliament on television, and his speeches in the House of Commons were reported the next couple of days in the paper. He was clearly not out of the country. This may not have been his fault—it was probably his office—but I don't honestly believe we had enough opportunity to make our views known.

Mr. Ted McWhinney: I can't speak for others, of course, but I can say for myself, and I suspect also for Svend Robinson, that we had constant communications from the Serbian community, which is a very significant community in Vancouver. I saw people immediately when they asked to see me, and repeatedly. Their views were passed on to the Canadian government, and I believe they were helpful in producing the very strong activist position the Canadian government took to get this from NATO into the G-8 and eventually into the United Nations' jurisdiction.

Mr. Robinson and I sometimes saw the same people, but certainly within Vancouver there was no problem in communication.

Ms. Radmila Swann: Actually, I should add that I know there was good communication in Vancouver, and I would like to go on the record as thanking you for that.

Mr. Ted McWhinney: Thank you very much, and in any further communications, I certainly would be very happy.... My office is always open. All Canadian communities have a legitimate role in expressing themselves, and I repeat again, it's not part of our policy to demonize any section of the Canadian population. The charm of the Canadian mosiac is that everybody can express their views and they are listened to. I believe they contribute to collective policy-making, and I appreciate your presentation and the very temperate way in which you presented your views.

Ms. Radmila Swann: Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. McWhinney.

Ms. Marleau.

Ms. Diane Marleau (Sudbury, Lib.): Hindsight is always 20/20, and when we look today, we realize that corner of the world is not better off for what has occurred and the situation is far more desperate now than it was.

• 1050

At a committee meeting earlier this week, one of the witnesses, an ex-ambassador to the region, basically said we were misled, that the numbers were exaggerated, that the information on the ground did not get to the politicians, and that CNN played a major role in convincing the populations that this was a humanitarian exercise or whatever, and therefore it went ahead.

I have a question for you. We see some of it and I don't disbelieve some of these points; they may be quite accurate. How could we, in a future exercise, prevent this kind of thing? What actions could the Government of Canada take to ensure we don't fall into the same kind of trap I believe we fell into?

I think our intentions were honourable. There was no doubt in my mind at the time. Since then, some of the statistics that were given to us at the time have been refuted. So I ask the question for the future.

I have a number of points. I hope I'm not bringing too many different things.

I decry the fact, I'm very disturbed with the fact, that we are not spending as much today in helping the area as we spent in bombing it. I can tell you the Canadian government spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the part we played, small as it was. I believe all of the countries spent tremendous amounts on bombing. I don't believe they're prepared to spend as much now. I think we need to play a very big role in making all the perpetrators of what happened there ante up with the same kinds of resources they were prepared to spend on the bombing. I think that would be important. If we could all do that, it would certainly help.

I have a third question. Everywhere around the world we're seeing more and more the need for civilian police. The military goes in, but the populations are more comfortable with civilian police. Do any of you think the creation of some kind of an international or UN police force, where people are trained for this, would be of benefit?

I look at some of the different areas in the world. Take Haiti. One of the things that happened when the military left was that we needed this kind of policing service. The same thing is happening now. We don't have the trained personnel. We don't have enough of them. Maybe we don't put enough resources into it. Does anyone have any thought as to how we could fill that gap and help restore law and order in some of these very troubled areas in the world?

Mr. Gwynne Dyer: Let me respond to your last question first. I think it's actually where the rubber meets the road on this issue.

A UN police force, to be made and placed at the disposal of various governments or interim administrations subsequent to events like the events in Kosovo is undoubtedly a good idea if it is actually a professional police force and not a sinecure for various people, as is often the case with UN institutions. You know, my drunken brother-in-law needs to be exported from this country as quickly as possible; let us make him a commander of the UN police. I'm sure our barrister can fix that.

Mr. Ted McWhinney: You're not speaking personally.

Mr. Gwynne Dyer: No, no. I'm not speaking personally. My brothers-in-law are all as sober as.... Well, you know.

Voices: Oh, oh!

The Chair: Mr. Dyer, I believe you have a brother-in-law in Toronto, so I hope you're going to take care as to what you're saying.

Mr. Gwynne Dyer: Yes, I do indeed. He was sober when I left this morning.

The risk always exists with international institutions that you get the lowest common denominator. On that ground, while in principle this is a very good idea, there isn't that desperate a shortage of professional police at the national level, and you can more or less guarantee they will be professional because they are constantly being used in active operational roles at home. If you could persuade the governments to ante up these police forces.... The language problems will be just as great with the UN police force, and the local familiarity problems will be just as great. The vast majority of them too will never have seen this country before they are deployed there.

• 1055

So you're not gaining anything in terms of adaptability, flexibility, familiarity, and you may be losing something in terms of professionalism. But either through UN police force or through greater willingness of national governments to provide not just bombs but cops, you do have to fill this gap.

On your other two questions, I find myself a bit at sea as how to answer, because I don't actually think of the NATO countries as “perpetrators” as you put it, of a crime, nor indeed that the information was so misleading that decisions were made on entirely wrong premises. But taking your perspective on that for a moment—

Ms. Diane Marleau: It's not mine, this is what has been put forward.

Mr. Gwynne Dyer: —or my companions' here....

Ms. Diane Marleau: Not from them but from prior—

Mr. Gwynne Dyer: Yes.

If it were the case in this or other instances that the information we are getting is imperfect, first of all, that is the nature of the world and, above all, the media, but governments do dispose of other means of acquiring information. It's very striking that Canada traditionally has depended on its allies to provide this information. We do not spend the money to gather much of it ourselves. CSIS is not an overseas intelligence-gathering operation. We have no military intelligence-gathering operation that gathers information overseas. Basically we let our big brothers and sisters tell us what's going on and make our decisions on second-hand information.

I don't honestly think the information either in the public media or in the western intelligence agencies in this occasion was so misleading that decisions were made on wrong grounds, but they certainly have been in other cases, and it is an argument for at least a modest effort in Canadian intelligence-gathering—not spying, but simply having somebody on the ground who knows the situation and the language and is regularly reporting on these developing situations. Of course our embassies are tasked to do this, but they're understaffed; 80% of their job is commercial these days. There's nobody really responsible in most embassies for this task. It's not a large amount of money to spend to get the decision-making process right.

The Chair: Ms. Swann.

Ms. Radmila Swann: I'd like to make a comment here.

You will recall, in answer to your first question, Mr. Bissett's comments—

Ms. Diane Marleau: That's who I was referring to.

Ms. Radmila Swann: I was fortunate enough to be here on Tuesday to hear them, and he is quite correct when he says that the ambassador is a messenger. He had views and facts that were being sent in to Ottawa that did not figure in the final solutions, that did not create the decisions that were taken.

Even if we have perfect information coming in from our people abroad—and I agree with Mr. Dyer that we don't have enough staff there—we still may not have the correct information being given to us in Parliament. My response would be that I would encourage every single one of you, as members of Parliament, to be extremely active in demanding debates, in demanding answers, in questioning important decisions like this. This is a war that we entered into.

There was information coming out in the foreign press that was so much better than what we received here in Canada and in the United States. You will notice in our paper, the paper I submitted, that many references are from the French newspapers, the German newspapers—the German newspapers of all things, with Germany being so heavily involved and with strong allegations being made that there is evidence to believe the government backed the KLA. Still, it was German newspapers that published a lot more truth about what was happening than what we received here.

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Therefore, I can only implore members of Parliament to act individually. I'm very concerned that we have so much party discipline that members don't have enough freedom to do their own thinking and to ask as many questions as perhaps they should. I strongly believe in a democratic parliament.

The Chair: I get The Guardian Weekly, which names Le Monde and everything in it. So it's not as if we're entirely restricted to what we pick up in the morning to go to work with.

Ms. Diane Marleau: We all hear the same information.

The Chair: I read a lot of French. I agree with you, there is a lot more in the European press, but that's the whole nature of the European system.

Ms. Radmila Swann: Then you knew that Racak was not an actual event, but a faked massacre.

The Chair: I had no way of knowing any more whether one opinion in one press was any different from or better than another opinion in another press. It's just their press opinions. If you think you have problems having the press listen to you, come and talk to us as politicians. Mr. Dyer never will publish what I say, don't worry.

Ms. Radmila Swann: Not to belabour the point, in Racak there were photographers present.

The Chair: We're going to go to Ms. Augustine, and then we're going to go back to Mr. Strahl and Mr. Robinson.

Ms. Jean Augustine (Etobicoke—Lakeshore, Lib.): I want to say thank you to the witnesses and to their very lucid discussion.

I am grappling with a whole series of things that I've heard over the last while. I am grappling with what the future of Kosovo is. Is it going to be an international protectorate? Is it going to be an entity no longer linked? What are some of the post-war transitions? What are all of the pieces there and how do all of these pieces fit together?

I am also interested in one of the presenters who said the bombardment did not stop the cleansing, but it did create conditions for the return of the hundreds of thousands of ordinary people who had been expelled. Had NATO not intervened, the witness said it is more than likely that the expellees would still be in Macedonia, Albania, and Montenegro, and the international community would be grappling with a humanitarian crisis of enormous proportions.

That summary and what we're hearing about the present situation does beg the question: what of the future?

Mr. Srdja Trifkovic: I would like to make a few comments about the future. What we keep forgetting is the broad picture: what will happen in the long term? The Kosovo crisis is primarily the result of the U.S. involvement in the Kosovo situation. Until the moment Dick Holbrooke decided that this was something they would tackle in a big way, it was, I insist, a low-level, unremarkable conflict the likes of which we see all over the world all of the time. At the moment there is a whole series of geopolitical reasons why the Washington administration wants to be involved in the Balkans. I'm afraid we have no time to go into those in any detail.

The important thing for you as members of this committee to remember is that you shouldn't take humanitarian and other alibis at face value. You should always assume there is an agenda behind it. One of them is to have a U.S. foothold in the European mainland that will not be subject to the ups and downs of the transatlantic relationship. Therefore, if and when the Germans, the French, and others decide to create a European defence structure that will gradually detach west Europeans from NATO and ultimately lead to the closure of U.S. bases in Naples, Frankfurt and Munich, there will be the access in Skopje, in Pristina and in Tuzla that will provide both the political and military presence that will not be affected by such a change in the relationship.

When I say there are geopolitical reasons that have a logic of their own, I am not claiming that in this particular case we can establish a definite sequence of events. I'm simply saying that humanitarian and moralistic claims by themselves are neither a sufficient nor necessary explanation.

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In order to look at Kosovo in the longer term, we have to ask the question: what will happen if and when the United States administration, after Clinton or even after whoever comes after Clinton, loses interest in the Balkans? At the moment they're creating the demand for their involvement by creating a whole series of small fragmented and unviable units that, by themselves, have neither the political nor cultural nor historic meaning such as Dayton-Bosnia, such as Kosovo, such as tomorrow, perhaps, Sanjak or Montenegro, whichever.

If and when the presence of the underwriters of Pax Americana in the Balkans are removed, we will have another bout of Hobbesian free-for-all. And that is the tragedy of it all, because what is being done right now is not the foundation for the revival of solid, just, and durable peace, but just an improvisation on an ad hoc basis that bears no relation to history, no relation to the continuity of political and cultural developments in that part of the world. It satisfies the needs of the moment.

I'm saying this not as someone born in Serbia, but as someone who is trying to look at the political essence of the problem. So far the U.S. administration has followed the principle that all of the ethnic groups in the area can be satisfied at the expense of the Serbs, and the result is a Carthaginian peace imposed upon the Serbian nation that will create a constant source of revengist resentment among the Serbs and a determination to turn the tables once Uncle Sam loses interest. I feel there will be a war the Serbs will fight to return Kosovo to their own rule, because they feel Kosovo has been unjustly detached.

And so whatever scenario people in Brussels, London, Washington, Ottawa, or Bonn decide for Kosovo today will not be worth the paper it's written on if it doesn't bear any relation to the geopolitical realities in the long term, and those realities are fairly simple. You will not be able to impose something called multicultural Kosovo, multi-ethnic Kosovo, if people on the ground—and here I primarily have the Albanians in mind—are determined to have a mono-ethnic Kosovo. By including a 25% Serbian membership in any quasi-representative body you introduce, you will not reinvent a multi-ethnic Kosovo from which grannies are not able to return to their apartments.

At the moment, the only way people in Kosovo will feel safe and secure living in their communities is if you have a de facto partition. Whether it is accompanied by a constitutional and political model that will sanctify that partition is neither here nor there. But you have to realize that an imposed Carthaginian peace on the Serb nation that does not take into account the legitimate interests of the Serbs in the longer term, that does not take into account the give and take in which each party will feel it has lost something as well as gained something, will be unviable, unjust, and, in the long term, the source of another conflict.

The Chair: Okay. With that rather pessimistic view, we'll have to go now to Mr. Strahl.

Mr. Strahl, do you want to follow up with a question? Next we'll have Mr. Robinson and then go around again.

Mr. Chuck Strahl: I have a question for Mr. Dyer.

Mr. Dyer, I know you've written in the Times Colonist on the west coast. You started your earlier discussions talking about the future: Where do we go from here? When do we intervene? What criteria do we use, and so on? And you've mentioned in your writings that you are puzzled by the lack of response by many western countries to the plight of many persecuted Christians in different areas of the world.

We have, of course, Mr. Harper's report on human rights violations in Sudan. Now everyone is seized with the question of what we do next. It's inconceivable that people don't understand the magnitude of the problem in Sudan, primarily an ethnic cleansing attempt by people from the government and its supporters persecuting Christians and others in the south. It's inconceivable that the western world does not know the magnitude of it, the numbers of people involved and so on. Yet when we do the report on it, the report is that not only is there no call for military intervention, there's almost no call for even diplomatic intervention.

• 1110

I don't know if there are parallels to the situation in Serbia or not, but it does seem to me that by picking and choosing our moments to intervene completely arbitrarily—except for just the fact that if there are airports close by, it's a better time to intervene than not—we weaken our moral right to intervene at all.

I hate to say it, because I want to see these things stopped, but it's very frustrating to look on and see people and Canadians and the Canadian government just say “Well, if I can fly a 320 there, that's a good one. And if there are no paved airports, we'll just ignore it for years and years, even though we know the atrocities go on.” We not only ignore an intervention, but we ignore even diplomatic interventions and actions.

So I guess my question to you is what kinds of criteria should we develop for not only Canada, but for the UN and other bodies, like NATO, to intervene? It does seem to me that the ethnic cleansing that's going on in Sudan, which will go down as one of the biggest atrocities of the second half of the 20th century, is ignored because it's hard to get to, and for no other reason.

Mr. Gwynne Dyer: I quite agree with you about that, although I wasn't actually puzzled that we didn't respond when Christians were persecuted; I was kind of pleased that we don't selectively respond only when Christians are persecuted, that we've moved a little—

Mr. Chuck Strahl: They shouldn't be excluded, either.

Mr. Gwynne Dyer: They shouldn't be excluded. But I was pointing out.... Actually, I was writing that largely for a Muslim audience, and it was used all over the Middle East, and some people misinterpreted what I was saying.

No, I'm actually quite pleased that we don't knee-jerk react only when Christians are the victims, that we've moved a little bit beyond that, and we're equally concerned when Muslims are the victims, and so on, as we should be. But in this case, in the case of the southern Sudan, certainly it is Christians who are the victims.

The problem is it really is very hard to get to. So in practical terms, an intervention in the southern Sudan, which is 1,500 miles from Cairo and about 500 miles from the nearest airport in Nairobi or from Kampala, is logistically a task of unimaginable difficulty. And Sudan is a big place.

So the practical limits of intervention in this case probably are set at embargos, boycotts, diplomatic pressure, and so on, some of which have been applied. This week we've had an instance in which the Americans have taken a rather more robust position than our own government has taken—you know, their interest is a large fish in a small pond here. But there is certainly no justification for not equally deploring what is going on in various parts of the world.

There is another aspect to this I have to mention, and that is the Africa allergy. It's not racist. I do not think it's racist. It actually comes from a bitterly sad experience we had in Somalia at the beginning of this decade, particularly bitter for Canadians for reasons that had nothing to do with Africa or Somalia but rather with the state of our own armed forces at that time.

Throughout the west as a result particularly of Somalia and the so-called “Mogadishu line” that was drawn after that, there was enormous selective reluctance to intervene in African humanitarian crises. And of course always the logistics are more difficult in Africa. Also, generally in Africa the situation tends to be more than two-sided. Intervention in many-sided conflicts is inherently very much more complex and likely to get you dragged in, not as the impartial mediator and peacekeeper but rather with all sides tugging at you to exploit you. This is what happened in Somalia, indeed.

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Despite that, we are seeing right now a peacekeeping force—an international, mostly non-African peacekeeping force—being put together for Sierra Leone, to take the place of the Nigerians who have borne the burden there. It's not a lost cause, but I do recognize that we are being selective. I cannot imagine how we could not be selective. What we really have to do, in practical terms, is find ways of acknowledging this selectivity, expressing the same moral outrage, and being explicit about why we are not doing something about it. I think it's a much more honest position to take.

Mr. Chuck Strahl: I tend to agree with you. Certainly Canada doesn't have the resources to be all things to all people. In fact, even the American capabilities have been reduced significantly, and even they can't be all things to all people.

I do just want to say in regard to the Serbian conflict—not just the war in Kosovo, but some of the other atrocities that went on in 1995 and at other times—that I do think your ability to step forward as a nation and decry human rights abuses is almost directly proportional to your consistency on that international stage to decry all atrocities.

Mr. Gwynne Dyer: Yes, not necessarily intervene, but certainly decry.

Mr. Chuck Strahl: Yes, and I do think the Serbian community in Canada that's looking at what went on has a right to be offended in the worst way that the atrocities that did occur against Serbs in other parts of that troubled area didn't receive the same sort of attention from the international community or from Canada. That's part of why they're so indignant about what's gone on since.

I'm not saying we did the wrong thing there, because I think a whole bunch of things came up to that. Again, however, it's much easier to justify a course of action if you can be consistent on decrying those abuses on all sides in leading up to it. That was not done, and that was a shame.

The Chair: That may be a statement rather than a question.

Mr. Chuck Strahl: I'm leaving it at that, yes.

The Chair: Mr. Strahl, you might be interested to know the speech by Mr. Axworthy was circulated to the committee on Monday, setting out the Canadian government's position on when it's appropriate to intervene. It's a speech he gave at the UN, and it actually sets out principles that are not unlike those mentioned by you and Mr. Dyer. You might want to have a look at it. We can give you a copy.

Mr. Chuck Strahl: Thank you.

The Chair: I'm going to pass to Mr. Robinson. Before I do, though, I understand that Professor Trifkovic must leave shortly to catch a plane to Europe.

Mr. Srdja Trifkovic: Actually, it's to Chicago, where I change to the plane for Amsterdam. I can stay for another ten minutes.

The Chair: Okay, when you're comfortable to leave, just leave. I just want to say that if you do just get up to go—

Mr. Srdja Trifkovic: There will be no tears shed.

Voices: Oh, oh!

The Chair: No, there will be tears. They may be crocodile tears or they may be tears of joy, who knows? But certainly I just want to say that we appreciate very much the fact you have taken the time to come. There's no doubt about it being a very interesting intervention. Please, when you have to go, just feel free to get up and go, and please don't think us rude if we don't properly acknowledge your very important contribution. Thank you, sir.

Mr. Robinson.

Mr. Svend Robinson: I'm afraid I'll have to leave around the same time. I'm not sure if the tears will be quite as intense, but—

An hon. member: They're definitely crocodile ones for you, Mr. Robinson.

The Chair: If the tears are shed.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

The Chair: Mr. Robinson, the tears are shed when you arrive, not when you leave.

Mr. Svend Robinson: I might say that I was heartened my Mr. Strahl's comments with respect to the Sudan. I noted that there seems to be some divergence of view on the subject between him and his colleague Mr. Martin. I certainly prefer his take on this particular issue, and I trust he'll have some influence on his colleague.

I just had two questions, for Mr. Trifkovic and Ms. Swann in particular.

First, I wonder if you could perhaps elaborate a bit on some of the concerns around the current situation in Pancevo and what your knowledge is of the situation in Pancevo. I had the opportunity to visit there, and the situation had the potential of being an environmental disaster. I'm just wondering what the current analysis is of the outcome of the bombing in that area, and what sort of testing of the environment has been done—for example, of the water, the air and so on. There were serious concerns about that.

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My second question, again to both of you, is I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the responsibility of Serbs in Kosovo for wrongdoing.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees documented quite powerfully a major exodus of Kosovar Albanians before March 24. I'm sure you're familiar with those reports. You've seen those reports: as many as 90,000 who had left their homes, left their villages.

After the bombing started, did the bombing exacerbate the flow of people? I have no doubt that it did. Certainly a number of people I spoke with pointed out how in some cases Serbs on the ground were pointing up into the sky and saying “You were responsible for NATO”. They felt that they were under siege from the KLA, the NATO bombs, and obviously when people are defenceless on the ground they're totally vulnerable. It was a coward's war in many respects. Nevertheless, people were driven out in huge numbers. Hundreds of thousands of people left and were driven out.

I was on a road from Pristina down to the border with Macedonia, and went through village after village that were like ghost towns. Houses had been burned to the ground in many cases. There's culpability for that.

I want to hear from both of you some acknowledgement that, yes, we have to deal with this as well as part of the reckoning that must come out of this tragic series of events.

Mr. Srdja Trifkovic: I'll deal with the second one and then I'll have to go.

I think the important thing to bear in mind in the Balkans is there are no white hats and black hats. That's the fundamental problem we have faced with the coverage of the war in the media and with quasi-academic analysis and with political decision-making.

Very early on in this conflict an overall perception of the culpability of the Serbs for the Krajina, Bosnia, and Kosovo was created, even though very often the reasons the Serbs reacted in the Krajina are very similar to the reasons the Albanians reacted in Kosovo, and vice versa. In some cases the Serbs were de facto separatists, wanting to secede from the separating entity. In other times they were the unitarists.

If you try to quantify the evil on all sides, I really believe it's impossible to say that the Serbs proved qualitatively fundamentally worse than other groups, because right now the Serbs constitute the largest refugee population outside sub-Saharan Africa. And to say that the Serbs have done evil things is almost a truism, because in the Balkan imbroglio all sides have done very evil things. If you want the Serbs to beat their chests and shout mea culpa, indeed, maybe they should. We should quote the words of our patriarch, Pavle, who said that if the Serbs start adopting some of the techniques and some of the feelings of their enemies as they experienced them in 1941 to 1945 in the so-called independent state of Croatia, then indeed they're deserving of every punishment.

If we want to try to establish a modicum of even-handedness in this debate, I think it's important to remember that there is the overall perception of the disproportionate Serb culpability, especially in the field of humanitarian indiscretions and in the field of war crimes, that does not respond to the realities on the ground. In the same way as what you experienced in Kosovo, you could have experienced, in driving from Glina to Zagreb, village after village in the Krajina burned to the ground, with all inhabitants either dead or in exile in Serbia. Those people are not coming back.

If this was the war to return the Albanians, or in the memorable words of the then British defence minister, “Serbs out, Albanians back, NATO in”, well, nobody is talking about Serbs back in Kosovo these days. If, as Ms. Augustine mentioned, this was the war to return 700,000 or whatever displaced Albanians, nobody's really talking about a program for the return of a quarter of a million displaced Serbs, non-Albanians, under NATO in the aftermath of NATO's victory.

• 1125

So I will be the first to admit that the Serbs have done bad things, just as everybody else has done bad things. But it doesn't mean we are now going to ask the question: How deserving are the Croats of being bombed, because they contributed collectively to the exodus of a quarter of a million Serbs from the Krajina? How deserving are the Muslims of castigation and bombing, because right now the whole of Sarajevo, until 1991 the second-largest Serbian town, are Serbenfrei?

If we are to re-establish a modicum of reality in this debate, we have to bear in mind that human fallibility and human culpability are not the exclusive prerogative of any one single ethnic group.

Thank you.

Mr. Svend Robinson: Mr. Dyer, were you wanting to comment?

Mr. Gwynn Dyer: I was particularly struck by the use of the word Serbenfrei to describe the Serbian authorities' forcible removal of the Serbian population of Sarajevo after the Dayton Accords. There were Serbians in that city who were driven from their homes by the Serbian police. I was there; I saw it. The idea that the Albanian Muslims and the Bosnian Muslims and the Croats bear equal responsibility....

All of them have done bad things. Of course bad things happen in war. But neither the total of refugees nor the total of dead nor the evidence of massacre suggests in any way that there is shared responsibility, equally and indistinguishably, among the ethnic groups of the Balkans.

This may be to some extent because the Serbs inherited the heavy weapons of the old Yugoslav army and had the ability to do more damage. I recognize that. The Bosnian Muslims didn't have heavy artillery to shell Serbian villages as the Serbs did to shell Sarajevo. But I do find the line of argument that suggests there can be no distinction between Vukovar and Srebrenica on the one hand and the Krajina on the other hand—the Krajina mark two when it was the Serbs who lost their homes, rather than mark one when it was the Croatian inhabitants who were driven from their homes—is a travesty.

Mr. Srdja Trifkovic: To claim the Krajina is less of a crime than Srebrenica, even though the Krajina resulted in between 9,000 and 12,000 Serbian deaths, is a very curious argument, both morally and intellectually. But in particular, I find it reprehensible that Kosovo is still referred to as “the massacre”, because the Kosovo massacre is one of the biggest media-mediated political lies of the decade, if not the century. In perspective, when a few decades pass, it will belong to the same category as bayoneted Belgian babies by the kaiser's army in 1914.

I'm very sorry. I have to leave. Thank you very much.

Mr. Svend Robinson: Ms. Swann, you were going to comment briefly on the environmental—

The Chair: Could you keep it fairly brief? We're going to have to move on again.

Ms. Radmila Swann: All right, but I would also like to comment briefly on the question we've just been discussing about the crimes in Kosovo.

In terms of the number of refugees—and this goes back to Ms. Augustine's point as well—there is absolutely no doubt that the numbers of refugees from Kosovo, the numbers that were driven out, were enormous after the bombing. There was a very great difference. And you'll recall that the OSCE also said they did not see ethnic cleansing at the time they were monitoring.

I would also like to make a couple of other comments. There is no evidence that there was a policy on the part of the Yugoslav government to do either genocide or ethnic cleansing. Yes, there were deaths. There was a war. Yes, there were refugees. And actually, logically one cannot have both genocide and ethnic cleansing. Either you kill the people or you drive them out.

But apart from that, as far as Krajina is concerned, I believe Mr. Dyer mentioned that the Serbs had driven the Croats out of their homes as “mark one”. I am very puzzled by that comment, because the Serbs of Krajina, unlike the Albanians of Kosovo, did not engage in any terrorist activities. This is an enormous difference. They were peaceful citizens of what they regarded as Yugoslavia. They were in the same position as the Anglo-Saxons are right now in the province of Quebec.

• 1130

If I may return to the question about Pancevo, frankly I do not know what the situation is on this date. I do know that tonnes of chemicals were released into the air and also tonnes of chemicals into the Danube. This was done purposely, because the scientists working at the complex—and this is not one plant, it's a huge chemical complex with many different plants—made the judgment that it would be safer for the population. It was a terrible decision to make that it would be safer for the population to release these chemicals into the water rather than to let them go into the air.

There has been testing done, but I don't know—I would not presume to guess—the extent to which the Yugoslav government has been able to do very much about the pollution in Pancevo. I do know from the Serbian community that women who were pregnant up to a certain number of months were told—an announcement was made by the government—they should have abortions because of the risk of giving birth to deformed children.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Svend Robinson: Thank you.

The Chair: I have Mr. McWhinney on the list, but before he comes, I might just take a quick crack at something myself.

I'd just like to point out—I'm sorry the professor has left—that I think all of us struggle when we consider this issue. I think any suggestion—and there was in your paper—that parliamentarians were not informed, that there was no discussion.... We had extensive debates on this issue in Parliament, and this committee sat regularly when this matter was considered and debated and wrestled with. We considered strongly, believe you me, the legal, moral, and political issues that were here. And they weren't easy. I have a constituent here in the room who came to see me regularly to tell me I was totally wrong, and who still believes that. But that's not to say we didn't struggle with it and don't recognize the complexity and the difficulties of what we're still struggling with.

What we really want to try to do is find out what went wrong, what went right, and what we can possibly do as we move forward. I'm afraid the hearings so far have dwelled very strongly on the past. So I'm tempted to say to you, when you say there's no evidence the Serbs did anything that was either genocide or refugee driving-out, what are the indictments in the war crimes tribunal all about if nothing was done? This causes problems for me.

But it seems to me what we have are.... What do we do on the three issues we've looked at this morning? What about UNMIK? It's there. Madam Swann, Mr. McWhinney's question was very good. He said if you object to the legality of what took place before by NATO because it wasn't UN sanctioned, the present situation is UN sanctioned. You can't have your cake and eat it too. You have to accept then that this is a legal operation. If your previous position was that it was illegal because it wasn't UN sanctioned, this presence is UN sanctioned. Now, how do we make it operate? That seems to be question number one, and so far, apart from your recommendation that we should introduce Serbian police, which is an interesting one.... But would they be under UN authority or command? How would that work?

But what do we do there? I want to ask maybe both you and Mr. Dyer: what constructive things? What do we clean up?

Secondly, what about the issue of sanctions? We haven't heard anything. We've heard how they're hurting the Yugoslav population, but we have to come to grips with the problems. We're told that until Mr. Milosevic is gone, there will be no solution in the Balkans. So are the sanctions contributing to that? Is the pain of the Serbian population worth the price of the sanctions that are being paid? This is analogous to Iraq, which we're looking at, and other situations. These are big issues. You could help us by telling us, apart from the pain people are suffering, what constructive things we could do.

Some of my constituents came and said “Look, we should at least let people send parcels. We should be enabling Serbian people here in our own country to reach out and deal with their colleagues and their families and their country.” Maybe we could make recommendations, practical recommendations, in that respect. So help us with that.

• 1135

Thirdly, I guess to you, Mr. Dyer, I'd like to ask a really difficult question that I have about this whole business of the ICC and where we're going. As a lesson of the intervention, if what you're telling us is that we only intervene where we can and we should never intervene because we only selectively intervene, what it tells me is that if we don't go to Russia because they have the atomic weapons, etc., and it would be too costly a war.... When we look at the issue of nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, and weapons of mass destruction, what you're telling me is we're creating a global society in which every tin pot dictator is going to make sure they acquire a weapon of mass destruction so nobody would ever dare intervene.

Putting it into historical context, if Mr. Milosevic had had the atom bomb, we wouldn't be there. It tells me that the next Mr. Milosevic is going to make sure before he moves that he has an atom bomb. I guess that's what Mr. Saddam Hussein is all about in Iraq and what we've got to come to grips with.

Maybe it's not a fair question, but after all....

Mr. Gwynne Dyer: No, it's not a fair question, but....

The Chair: Anyway, those are my three questions: What can we do to clean up the present UN operation? Secondly, what about the sanctions? Thirdly, what about that rather bigger...?

Mr. Gwynne Dyer: Let me again take the last first, because it's the broadest and largest, and we can go afterwards to the details, which are very important details.

If Mr. Milosevic had had a nuclear weapon, would we have intervened? I think so. A nuclear weapon doesn't change everything.

The Chair: Ten thousand do.

Mr. Gwynne Dyer: Ten thousand definitely do. The South Africans had six nuclear weapons. Israel has 200 nuclear weapons. We still imagine the possibility of a conventional war on the ground in the Middle East in which these weapons will not be used. We expect that they would not be used.

Nuclear weapons in large numbers are world killers, or at least continent killers, and obviously they change the context of everything. That's what we deal with when we deal with the Russians, perhaps even with the Chinese. One or two nuclear weapons is a calamity if you happen to be nearby, but it's not actually a continent killer. A country that has only one or two nuclear weapons and is in conflict with an alliance that has many is almost never going to use them. They are useful for bluff, but it is suicidal to use them.

If you believe in deterrence at all, this shouldn't change all of the relationships. It is far preferable that people do not have nuclear weapons, including us, but in the interim I don't think this automatically changes all other relationships and choices.

Let me leave it at that, because I think that in a sense we're talking about a non-issue here. If we were talking about hundreds of nuclear weapons and a demonstrable capability to use them and to preserve them from a first strike, then you are in a different ballgame.

As regards the question of what we do about UNMIK and KFOR and the general administration of Kosovo right now, I would actually say throwing money at it would help a great deal, in the sense that if we could get aid in for both Serbian and Albanian populations, if we could get police in, if we could rapidly put together a civil administration...perhaps a headless one, because it's very hard to get the Albanian and Serbian members to sit together on administrative council, and we're still haggling about that. Actually persuading a Serbian representative to sit there with the Albanians is proving to be a major problem, and I understand why. But even a legal structure in which in fact criminals will be arrested by a designated police force, brought before designated courts that have qualified judges—that alone would transform the situation, and that is largely a question of resources.

Beyond that, regarding the long-term future of Kosovo, we have made significantly contradictory half promises. In resolution 1244, and indeed in the agreement that ended the bombing, we talk about the return of Serbs—a limited number, unspecified, of Serbian police and so on. I don't think this should be excluded at all, but it is, as you say, a question of under whose command. The opinion of those who are actually in Kosovo is that the situation has got so far out of control that cantonization may be the only short-term solution. It's extremely unattractive. We fought against it bitterly at the end of the war—the idea that there would be a safe Serbian haven in the north, leading to ultimate partition of Kosovo.

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Now we're talking about essentially cantons within Kosovo—above all, Kosovska Mitrovica, but also Gracanica in the centre and perhaps a couple of areas in the south where there is a sufficiently large Serbian population. I don't find that an attractive solution—I'm sure nobody does—but in terms of simple security for the Serbs who remain, it may be a necessary interim solution and a place where Serbian police, provided they were ultimately responsible to the local administration and did not simply become an armed force to counterbalance KFOR within the province, would be desirable. But in the longer term, the question of Serbian sovereignty and of Albanian or Kosovo self-determination remains entirely unresolved and indeed unaddressed.

Finally, on your question of the sanctions, I see no use in them. I see no use at the moment in continuing sanctions against Serbia, which has after all met our demands over Kosovo—after 78 days of bombing, but it has met our demands. There are no ongoing massive human rights abuses in Serbia that would justify their retention, and from a purely pragmatic point of view, should Mr. Milosevic misbehave again, you can't reimpose sanctions if you haven't lifted them. You have effectively no remaining leverage over Serbia, over Mr. Milosevic, if you do not lift sanctions, which are causing significant harm and suffering, in any case, among the Serbian population, which is in no way responsible for the present situation.

The Chair: Right. That's very helpful. Thank you.

Ms. Swann.

Ms. Radmila Swann: I believe we ought to be working with the Government of Serbia. We ought to be bringing back the police, but we ought to also be working with the Serbian government since Kosovo is still a part of Serbia. This would give confidence to the Serbians and no doubt to some of the Albanians who are in terror from the Albanian mafia right now. The Serbian police and the Serbian officials do have experience in administration. It makes more sense to use them than to be trying to transform KLA terrorists into police.

There is also the question of disarming the Albanians. According to all reports, this has not been done. There was, in the early days in June, the suggestion that instead of disarmament there would be demilitarization. Demilitarization has not worked either. We know that the KLA still have a lot of weapons, which they are using.

I would also agree with Mr. Dyer's suggestion that we should throw money in the direction of Kosovo, and in fact in the direction of all of Serbia. It would certainly help to alleviate some of the looting, some of the thievery, if people felt they had an opportunity to reconstruct their homes, if they began to have an opportunity to actually earn food and necessities instead of having a free-for-all to obtain them.

On the question of sanctions, I too agree that the sanctions ought to be removed. They are harming a large number of innocent people.

With respect to Mr. Milosevic, I am not a supporter of Mr. Milosevic. I'm a Canadian citizen who was born here, not in Yugoslavia. But I must say that we should question the extent to which we focus our foreign policy on individuals—the same with Saddam Hussein in Iraq, or Fidel Castro, or Mr. Milosevic, or anyone. It bothers me that we should be here discussing how we can get rid of Mr. Milosevic. We have had unpopular prime ministers, but I think if someone were sitting in Portugal or Brazil or whatever country in the world discussing how to get rid of our prime minister, we would be deeply offended.

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I would submit that it is not the business of the Canadian government to worry about how to remove the leader of another country, it is the business of the Serbian people. But if we are really concerned about humanitarian activities, about aid, if we are concerned about peace in the world, we will work with the government that is there until the Serbian people decide to change it. They have signed the peace. We shouldn't be continuing the war.

Mr. Svend Robinson: I'm sorry, but I do have to leave because I'm catching a plane to Vancouver. I just wanted to raise one procedural issue, if the witnesses will excuse me just for a minute. It's with respect to the hearings themselves.

It has always been my understanding that at the conclusion of hearing from witnesses, such as the witnesses today, witnesses from the department, and so on, clearly we would hear from the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of Defence. That was the understanding that I had. In fact I raised that issue during the meeting we held to discuss the progress of these hearings. It's the ministers who are ultimately accountable to the Canadian people. I'm not sure, but just through conversation with the clerk, there seems to be some question as to whether that will be the case.

I want to seek an assurance—and I trust my colleagues would agree to that, clearly if we're dealing with questions arising from where we are now and what the situation currently—because it's essential that we hear from both the Minister of National Defence and the Minister of Foreign Affairs. It doesn't have to be two separate hearings, but it's essential, Mr. Chairman. If there's to be political accountability, we have to hear from the ministers. I just want an assurance that indeed we will be hearing from the ministers.

[Translation]

Mr. Denis Paradis (Brome—Missisquoi, Lib.): Mr. Chairman, I think this is a new request being made of us this morning.

A voice: No.

Mr. Denis Paradis: I attended the meetings and that's not how I understood it.

[English]

The Chair: Mr. Robinson, the clerk tells me that if we look at the minutes of the meetings we're discussing, there was no agreement of the committee that we would call the two ministers before us on this issue. The ministers will be coming before us on other issues. You can ask them about it. In the end, if the committee wants to ask them to come, that's fine. But to my understanding, there was no sort of condition préalable that we would call the two ministers in the context of this particular hearing. They'll be coming before us—

Mr. Svend Robinson: Mr. Chairman, we can't even get the ministers to come before us on anything at this point. We're still trying to schedule them. We haven't had ministers before us.... Again, I want to reiterate the point that it is the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of National Defence who are accountable to us as members of Parliament. These are fellow parliamentarians, and they're responsible for government policy. Surely to goodness, after we've heard from officials and from witnesses, we should have an opportunity to question the ministers who are responsible. I can't imagine that my colleagues on the other side wouldn't agree with that.

The Chair: Well, that point is on the record, but let's not take it up now. We only have ten minutes left.

Mr. Svend Robinson: Perhaps we can come back to this at the next meeting of the steering committee, if we could have a steering committee meeting early next week, Mr. Chairman.

The Chair: We have a lot of meetings, but we'll see what we can do. I understand what you're saying. As I said, though, let's not take up too much time talking about it here while we have these witnesses.

Mr. Ted McWhinney: By the way, Svend, I'd rather have the ministers' reactions to our report when we make it. We've heard a great deal of evidence. I think some very clear ideas have come forward, and I'd rather have the response of the ministers afterwards, because I suspect we're going to be making some recommendations. But let me come back to the issues.

Our foreign policy was once very Eurocentrist, and I was amused when there was a reference to the Christian approach to foreign policy. Our foreign policy was run by the British until essentially 1931. Do you remember the Gladstone era, when Gladstone and Disraeli were feuding? Of course the people who were demonized were the Turks. “The unspeakable Turk” was the favourite English expression in foreign policy as an excuse for intervention in the Middle East and various places. But we're a multicultural, multireligious country, and I assure you that on almost every issue, every one of our cultural communities writes to me to give me their views. They're entitled to, because it's a legitimate part of foreign policy making, and we communicate those views.

I'll just make a statement, and maybe you could respond to it. I'm not sure everybody's fully aware of where soft diplomacy implies quiet diplomacy. How much intellectual energy in the foreign ministry went into bringing the Kosovo operation and its conclusions under the aegis of the United Nations? A lot of people worked on this—Mr. Axworthy, Greek Prime Minister Simitis and Foreign Minister Papandreou, Jr., the Russian foreign minister—and it is there. You know, there's a reality.

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What we're trying to learn from this is where we go from here in terms of international institutions and our role in them. Canadian foreign policy since Lester Pearson and Paul Martin, Sr., has been posited on the United Nations as the prime instrument of our foreign policy. Was there a right of humanitarian intervention in international law? I think most scholars would tell you it was very doubtful whether or not it existed before the Kosovo incident. We all have to study what's happening now. Even the Americans are studying it. Although American scholars and Russian scholars tend to be closer to their respective foreign ministry than they do in this country, there is a process of examination going on.

I expect this committee will be reporting to the minister with recommendations. One of the clear ideas coming forward is that if there is humanitarian intervention and we're involved, we would like it to be under genuine international auspices and not a regional alliance.

What about the Security Council blockage by veto? Leslie Green has raised the issue—as I have, by the way—of using the General Assembly. He raised it in his Edmonton speech. The thought was that the General Assembly was avoided because people thought they couldn't get a two-thirds majority. That's an interesting question, a hypothetical question that has come out.

Clearly, Mr. Chairman, we'll be looking to making recommendations. One of the things coming through from witnesses is that we want genuine international auspices and a control on them.

I think one of the secondary issues is frustration for Canada. You'll remember that we were not part of the group of seven in the Balkan issues and an accord like Rambouillet. We were not part of it, so I think in the future maybe we're going to be suggesting that we have to be part of it.

Look, international law is growing, and it often starts with actions that are unilateral and don't have a legal justification. Take the law of the sea. With the 200-mile limit under which we operated against Spain and Portugal, we made international law there and got away with it because we raised a larger international issue. This is what's happening.

But you can help us. You have helped us by telling us under what modalities and processes you want this to operate.

The Chair: But don't get into the Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act, brought in under Mr. Trudeau, because that's where Mr. McWhinney is leading us.

Mr. Ted McWhinney: As you know, it broke Paul Martin, Sr.'s heart when Mr. Trudeau did that.

The Chair: But that's international law.

Mr. Gwynne Dyer: I'm very glad you raised the issue. It was actually the Icelanders who took the lead on the 200-mile limit, and then we followed. But you're quite right that departures from the existing law often open the way to the creation of new law.

In this particular case, we need to understand that we're dealing with two new bodies of international law post-1945, one of which in a sense reinforces the Westphalian system. But what it did was a departure. The UN charter makes war illegal, which it was not previously, except—

Mr. Ted McWhinney: The use of armed force is illegal.

Mr. Gwynne Dyer: The use of armed force is illegal except under the two conditions that I mentioned at the very beginning of this morning, neither of which applied in the case of the Kosovo operation.

There is another body of post-war international law from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the convention against genocide, which is actually substantially in contradiction with the charter and was known to be so by those who signed it. I often suspect that they got it signed under the argument that it doesn't matter if you sign it because it won't be enforced, so let's get the signatures now. It certainly wasn't enforced for the next thirty years.

The new situation has arisen in the nineties because of the absence of a countervailing force in the world that paralyzes our willingness to do anything under the other, if you like, humanitarian body of international law. Now that has come out of the cupboard. I don't think we actually proceeded on those principles in March, but in scrambling around to find some principles to explain what we had done, we rapidly discovered they'd been in the cupboard all along.

So now we are confronted—and I think we'll continue to be confronted—with the problem of reconciling these two bodies of international law, one of which imposes absolute moral obligations to act in defence of human rights where they are being abused in extreme ways by governments; and the other of which grants governments absolute sovereignty and immunity from intervention. Recall how we treated Pol Pot, the sovereign leader of a sovereign state who was overthrown by the Vietnamese. And by the way, a massive genocide was stopped, but whom did we continue to recognize for the next 10 years? Pol Pot.

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That law pays no attention to human rights. There are pretty words in the UN charter, but if you read it, chapter 7 doesn't have anything to do with human rights, it has to do with state sovereignty.

There is this other body of law. It's out of the cupboard. We have retroactively, if you like, justified our actions under it. We do have the task of reconciling these two. It is essentially a question of addressing the way the UN works so that the UN can operate in these areas where the veto now perspectively paralyzes it. That could be addressed by going through and reinforcing the power of the General Assembly, which has been emasculated in almost all of the periods since the United Nations' creation, in terms of actual power.

It can also, and may well in the end, be addressed by the inevitable expansion of the permanent membership of the Security Council. I rather suspect that here...this is a chasm you do cross in two jumps. I would not be surprised if the demands of Japan, Germany, India, and so on for permanent membership will be granted, but we will move to a Security Council with, let us say, nine or ten permanent members, and a deal one can imagine is that while a veto would remain, it would be a two veto. One can imagine that even the Americans would accept this, because they'd be sure they could always get somebody else to vote with them. You're moving then from the absolute veto to a shared veto, and further dilution of the veto over time. But we are clearly talking about over time.

The Chair: This is the OSCE consensus-minus-one rule, which drives everybody bananas over there too.

Mr. Gwynne Dyer: Yes, but it's the way I think we'll go.

The Chair: Ms. Swann, very quickly, because our time is now up.

Ms. Radmila Swann: I would just comment that I agree with everything that Mr. McWhinney said except the starting premise, which is that in fact there was a need for intervention in Kosovo because of the humanitarian catastrophe.

Mr. Ted McWhinney: I'm sorry, I didn't express any normative view. I was deliberately careful to avoid that.

Ms. Radmila Swann: I thought I understood you to—-

Mr. Ted McWhinney: No, I deliberately didn't, because I was treating technical questions with witnesses like you [Inaudible—Editor].... I deliberately avoided a normative proposition.

Ms. Radmila Swann: Fine. Then I will rephrase my comments, which are that we are talking about process, and I think it's very important to be concerned about when we might take action, intervene for human rights. However, we should not ignore that the most important fact here is that the intervention that occurred in Yugoslavia did not occur because there were human rights being denied. There is no proof that there was a large number of deaths or a large number of refugees before the bombings occurred.

The Chair: Thank you for the observation. I'll tell you frankly, I have considerable difficulty with that proposition, and making it kind of undermines a lot of whatever else was advanced, because if you don't face facts, then what is the worth of dealing with these issues? However, that's the debate we had at the time of the intervention, and I guess that's the debate that will go on.

Mr. Dyer, maybe before you go I could just ask you about sanctions, since this committee will be looking at the question of sanctions on Iraq. You had such an interesting observation about how they're totally useless in terms of the present situation in the former Yugoslavia. Would you care to very briefly comment on the present sanctions regime as it applies to Iraq, and whether or not it's serving a political result or purpose?

Mr. Gwynne Dyer: Without suggesting that my final recommendation would be different, the situation certainly is different in Iraq. There is no political purpose that I can discern being served by the sanctions against Serbia. There is no demand we are making at the moment such that, if the Serbians complied with it, we would remove the sanctions. They sort of exist as a moral judgment. I actually share to a large extent the moral judgment, but I don't see any purpose in punishing individual Serbs for the actions of their leaders when all of this is now in the past.

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The sanctions against Iraq are more complex in the sense that they were imposed with a political purpose, which was the disarmament of the so-called special weapons, the nuclear biological and chemical weapons arsenal of Iraq, a task that is arguably not yet accomplished and also arguably may never be fully accomplished. Lord knows we've been at it for long enough, and the games that have been played have generally been won in the final round by the Iraqis. I think we got most of their nuclear weapons manufacturing plant, but the capacity remains and inevitably will remain. So it is an acknowledgement of defeat to remove sanctions from Iraq.

On the other hand, there is a far larger humanitarian disaster in Iraq than in Serbia that is attributable to our sanctions. The things you must weigh up here are different, I think, or the magnitude of the issues and the weight of the suffering is different.

But it is my impression that we are in any event moving toward abandoning the original purpose of the exercise, a full disarmament of Iraq on the non-conventional weapons front, in a sense pulling the—I can't remember the acronym right now—force we had in there chasing down these weapons last year and bombing instead. The bombing served to cover the abandonment of the original mission. So if the mission has been abandoned, the argument for abandoning the sanctions that were in support of that mission becomes, I think, stronger. Given the humanitarian component, a devastated generation in Iraq, I think the balance of the argument must go in favour of ending the sanctions there too.

The Chair: Thank you very much. That's very helpful. We'll be coming back to that.

I just want to thank you people very much for coming.

You might be interested to know, Madam Swann, on your point of reconstruction in the area, there is a group of Americans and ourselves.... I worked in the OSCE last summer in St. Petersburg with Senator Voinovich on resolutions that focus on trying reconstruction rather than... As you pointed out, Mr. Dyer, for the cost of two days of bombing we could probably do more good in the area than anything that's happening. So efforts are being made to try to move out of the box and ahead, but I don't deny that they're very difficult.

I really want to thank you very much for coming and sharing your thoughts with us. They will help us in trying to come to some recommendations for the government that hopefully will have some positive resonance, as opposed to just dealing with the past.

Thank you very much. We appreciate your attendance.

Mr. Gwynne Dyer: Thank you.

Ms. Radmila Swann: You're welcome. And good luck.

The Chair: Thank you. I do appreciate that.

We're adjourned until Tuesday at 9.30 a.m., when we'll continue this same discussion.