Part 7 - Activism - Return of the Weapons' Inspectors

In January of 2002, Prime Minister Chrétien appointed Bill Graham as the new Canadian Foreign Minister and hopes for a more sovereign Canadian position with regard to the USA gave us a reason to quicken our attempts to get the weapons inspectors back into Iraq. By this time Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck were now concentrating their efforts in Europe. Arthur Millholland was in the UK and busy with his business efforts. Lloyd Axworthy became busy with his UBC institute. It was left to Scott Ritter and I, to continue the discussions started in New York in the fall of 2001.

Scott Ritter arranged to meet with the Labour Party in the UK and the French Government to discuss the return of the inspectors. I began to build support in Ottawa with MPs with whom we could work. Notably, Madame Francine Lalonde of the Bloq, Dr. Keith Martin of the Alliance, Joe Clark of the Conservatives and Alexa McDonough of the NDP were contacted and they agreed to keep in touch with the initiative. Madame Lalonde became quite active and was a strong source of support. I was in constant contact with Madame Colleen Beaumier who gave us access to the Liberal caucus.

Meanwhile, I developed a relationship with Robert Fry, the senior advisor to Bill Graham, the Foreign Minister, as well as with Chris Hull and Graeme McIntyre from the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFAIT). Through Robert Fry we could get access to the Foreign Minister if the matter was significant enough. At this point we were feeling quite encouraged and I asked the Standing Committee to meet with Scott Ritter to discuss the return of weapons inspectors. Thanks to the efforts of Madame Lalonde and Dr. Martin the Committee agreed to meet with Scott Ritter and Denis Halliday in early June 2002.

The meeting with the Standing Committee was very successful. Scott Ritter was able to convey the importance of getting the weapons inspectors back into Iraq as a necessary step to getting the economic sanctions removed. There was a sense from the meeting that Canada could play a role once the inspectors had returned. Scott Ritter and I then met with Madame Lalonde to develop a document entitled “The Honest Broker”. The thrust of this document was to ask Iraq to agree first to the return of the weapons’ inspectors and then to permit Canada, South Africa and Belgium to help mitigate any difficulties that might arise between Iraq and the UN as a consequence of the inspections. These countries would not interfere with the inspectors themselves because they recognized that the U.S. would not tolerate any interference with the inspection process. However, situations might have arisen requiring some form of reconciliation between the UN and Iraq during the inspections. Canada was chosen because it is the major trading partner of the U.S. with a close historical, political and geographical relationship. South Africa was chosen to represent the non-aligned nations and Belgium because of its membership in NATO and the EU.

Part 6 - Activism - Scott Ritter's Influence

A new parliament was elected in November 2000 and we restarted our efforts to get Report #5 accepted by the Canadian Government. However, we now faced a new resistance. John Manley was appointed to the position of Foreign Minister and he took an even closer stance with Washington. During Manley’s tenure Canada moved as close to Washington as Canada had ever been. This caused individual MPs in the Liberal ranks to distance themselves from any initiative that may confront the U.S. We also witnessed a hardening of a pro-American position with the Alliance Party, under their new leader, Stockwell Day. Although we still held the support of the Bloq, the NDP and the Tories, getting majority support was becoming increasingly more difficult. This, combined with the election of the neo-conservative Bush Administration, made the matter of getting a resolution of the Iraqi sanctions almost impossible. It became clear to me that removal of sanctions could not happen without the return of the weapons inspectors and a resolution on the question of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), which became the buzzword of the Bush White House.

At this time the Bush White House had little or no interest in foreign relations. It seemed hunkered down in an isolationist mentality until the attack on the World Trade Center in September 2001. The ensuing “War on Terrorism” set a course for Bush and his neo-conservative cohorts that continues to affect the world in a seriously negative way. The appetite for war, demonstrated by Bush after the September attack, provoked me to call a meeting of international diplomats and interested individuals, to meet in New York to see what we could do to dampen the US enthusiasm for war. I contacted Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, both former United Nations Humanitarian Coordinators in Iraq at the Assistant Secretary-General level. I contacted Scott Ritter, the former US Marine Major and head of the UN weapons inspections in Iraq from 1991 through 1998. I also asked the former Foreign Minister of Canada, Lloyd Axworthy to join us, along with the president of the Canadian oil company, Oilexco, Arthur Millholland. Lloyd Axworthy had had a change of heart since leaving Ottawa and wanted to see what could be done to ease the pressure on Iraqi civilians. All agreed and a meeting was arranged for the end of November 2001 in New York, ironically held at the Republican Women’s Center. Mr. von Sponeck could not join us but was in contact via phone and email.

Although several ideas were discussed, it became clear that the return of the weapons inspectors was the only way out of the impasse. It was thought that Canada could play a role, given that it had an outstanding reputation at the UN and was not an imperialist nation. Iraq might accept recommendations coming from there. However, John Manley was still Foreign Minister in Canada and not predisposed to anything that may confront the U.S. We decided to continue discussions and to formulate a plan that could be discussed between Canada, Iraq and the UN.

Lloyd Axworthy agreed to discuss our meeting with Louise Frechette, a Canadian and the Deputy Secretary General of the UN, and with Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, whom he was to meet with at dinner while he was in New York and Washington. Conversations within the group continued over the last part of 2001 and into 2002.

Part 5 - Activism - Report #5

Report #5 (see side-bar), which was unanimously supported by the 18 Members of Parliament sitting on the Committee and representing all five political parties, called for a de-linking of sanctions. This meant the removal of economic sanctions but leaving military sanctions in place. It further called for an opening of dialogue between Canada and Iraq. The deputy Prime Minister of Iraq, Mr. Tariq Aziz, accepted Report #5, as a good basis to resolve the situation in Iraq. It was suggested that the Secretary General of the United Nations might use that report as a basis for breaking the impasse on getting proper humanitarian relief to Iraq.

Report #5 was rejected outright by the then Canadian Foreign Minister, Lloyd Axworthy, and it died without being taken to the UN. The main reason given by senior advisors to Axworthy, at a meeting that I attended, were as follows. “While we recognize the destruction to the people of Iraq, we cannot do anything to upset the U.S. Administration because they will beat us up on trade.” One of the senior advisors was a medical doctor who had visited Iraq and seen first hand the difficulties being experienced by the people of Iraq.

This resulted in two important outcomes for me. I met Madame Colleen Beaumier, the Vice-Chair of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, and I discovered that Lloyd Axworthy would not act if it meant confronting the United States.

I invited Madame Beaumier to come to New York to meet with the Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq, Mr. Tariq Aziz. She agreed and the meeting was arranged for September 2000 at the Iraq Permanent Mission to the UN in New York. We discussed Report #5 as a basis to solving the economic embargo on Iraq while agreeing that at this stage the military embargo had to remain in place. The meeting was cordial and it was the first time that parliamentarians from Canada and Iraq had met since the Gulf War. By now Canada had closed its embassy in Baghdad even though Iraq maintained a Charge d’Affaire in Ottawa. The action now became one of getting individual MPs to endorse Report #5, in an attempt to get a majority of the 301 MPs to sign a letter addressed to the Prime Minister (and copied to the Foreign Minister) demanding that Canada accept the results of the Report drafted by the Standing Committee assigned the task of advising the Foreign Minister. We received unanimous support from the Bloq Quebecois, the New Democratic Party and the Progressive Conservatives, while individual members of both the Liberal Party and the Alliance Party, led by Dr. Keith Martin agreed to endorse the Report. We had the support of 127 members when Parliament was dissolved on October 22nd, 2000 and an election called. This nullified our efforts until after the election.

Part 4 - Activism - Action with Canadian Government

I began to contact people I thought could give me information to help me develop a plan of action to assist the people of Iraq. The first was Denis Halliday. I remembered reading a statement that Mr. Halliday had made after he resigned his position with the UN in protest over U.S. interference in the relief operations in Iraq. He said, “I can find no legitimate justification for sustaining economic sanctions under these circumstances. To do so in my view is to disregard the high principles of the United Nation’s Charter, the Convention of Human Rights, the very moral leadership and the credibility of the United Nations itself.”

Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed Denis J. Halliday, an Irish national, to the post of United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq, at the Assistant Secretary-General level on September 1, 1997. Halliday served as such until the end of September 1998. During this period, the Security Council Resolution 986 “Oil for Food” Programme, introduced in 1996/97 to assist the people of Iraq under the Economic Sanctions imposed and sustained by the Security Council, was more than doubled in terms of oil revenues allowed. This enabled the introduction of a multi-sectored approach, albeit modest, to the problems of resolving malnutrition and child mortality. Mr. Halliday resigned from the post in Iraq, and from the United Nations as a whole, on October 31, 1998, after serving the Organization for 34 years.

After running the "Oil for Food" program, which uses Iraqi oil revenues to distribute basic food rations and medical aid to Iraqi civilians, Halliday turned his attention to spreading the word about sanctions-related suffering. I contacted Mr. Halliday in late 1999 and invited him to Canada. We met in Ottawa for a series of lectures and I took him to the House of Commons to meet the Chair of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Mr. Bill Graham. I wanted him to ask Mr. Graham to hold hearings on Iraq at the Standing Committee. Graham agreed immediately and the hearing was scheduled for March 2000. I arranged for Mr. Halliday and Mr. Arthur Millholland the president of Oilexco, the only Canadian company participating in the “Oil-for-Food” programme, to come to Ottawa as witnesses to the Committee. The Hearings lasted for three days, culminating in Report #5, “Resolution on Iraq”, which was tabled in the Canadian House of Commons on April 12th, 2000.

Part 3 - Activism - Effects of the US/UK Embargo

The World Health Organization (WHO), reported that “Pre-1990 Iraq reflects the health status of a modern developing society, in which the wealth it obtained from exporting its main commodity, oil, contributed to improving the quality of life of the Iraqi people, which then (1988/1989), was already at a relatively ‘satisfactory’ level, with indications of a trend for further improvement.”

UNICEF reported that, “The Government of Iraq made sizable investments in the education sector from the mid-1970’s until 1990. Educational policy included provision for scholarships, research facilities and medical support for students. By 1989 the combined primary and secondary enrollment stood at 75% (slightly above the average for all developing countries at 70%). Illiteracy had been reduced to 20% by 1987.

Education accounted for over 5% of the state budget above developing countries of 3.8%.”

After the imposition of sanctions in 1991 we know that:

1. 1.5 million Iraqi civilians have died since 1991 as a direct result of the sanctions.

2. 600,000 of the dead were children under 5 years of age according to UNICEF reports and substantiated by the Red Cross. A recent UN report stated that the infant mortality rate in Iraq is 133. This means that for every 1,000 children born, 133 will not reach the age of 5. By comparison, Canada’s infant mortality rate is less than four.

3. The number of malnourished children has increased over 300% since 1991.

4. Maternal mortality rates have more than doubled during this period of the sanctions and 70% of Iraqi women suffer from anemia.

5. Unemployment has soared under the sanctions, as has inflation. The average civilian salary, for example, is CAD$3.60 per month.

6. An estimated 800 tonnes of depleted uranium contained in ammunitions were used by the allied forces in the Gulf War. Cancer rates in Iraq have increased five-fold since the Gulf War. Childhood leukemia in Iraq has the highest rate in the world.

These undeniable facts lead me to travel to Iraq to view first hand the devastation to the Iraqi civilian population and the complete destruction of the civilian infrastructure and the civilian economy. I could no longer stand by and let the crimes continue, crimes to which the Canadian government was a partner. Tacit approval of the unjust conditions to which Iraqis were subjected was tantamount to direct involvement in the destruction.

Continued from October 3rd Blog

Also, vivid in my memory was the fact that the Cuban Missile Crisis was solved, not because one country attacked another, but rather as an outcome of dialogue. Yes, the Russians sent ships and the Americans countered with more ships, but ultimately dialogue prevented a war and the United Nations was involved in the solution. This message that I received from the events of 1962 still resonates today. That is, that dialogue is still the best way to solve disputes and the United Nations Organization is needed more than ever.

My activism carried me through high school and the Viet Nam War. The point is, my activism was born out of these events and the tumultuous 60’s. In 1981 I found myself living in Baghdad and working for a Canadian company called Canron. We were providing water pipe and fittings to Iraq for the supply of drinking water. The Iraqi regime had decreed that everyone in Iraq would have clean drinking water and properly treated sewage. As a Canadian company we were doing millions of dollars of trade in Iraq and I was sent to administer the contracts. My experience living among the people of Iraq and interacting with them was one of respect, kindness and honesty. When the Gulf War broke out and the U.S. talked about collateral damage for the first time, I thought of my Iraqis friends, and so I saw the war from a different perspective than did most North Americans.

I followed the events in Iraq and learned about the effect of the embargo on the people of Iraq and in particular to increased infant mortality. My daughter was born in December of 1990 and, being a ‘stay at home father’, I was deeply involved in raising my child and – readily empathized with those Iraqis who were losing their children at an alarming rate. Reports of the rise in infant mortality rate and deaths of civilians were stalled by the U.S. and U.K. at the United Nations. They blocked reports coming from the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF. Finally, the information could no longer be hidden and the “Oil-For-Food” programme was initiated in an attempt to alleviate the hunger to which years of embargo had subjected the Iraqi people.

We learned that during the 1991 Gulf War the U.S. led bombing raids that attacked every hospital, every water treatment plant, every wastewater plant, most schools and every major intersection in downtown Baghdad in order to destroy the water distribution and sewer collection systems. All attacks against civilian infrastructure are in direct violation of the UN Charter and must be considered war crimes. A good friend of mine, Denis Halliday, the former UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq said the following;

“We are in the process of destroying an entire society. It is as simple and terrifying as that. It is illegal and immoral.”

Back to the Blog - Back in Canada

Folks, my last entry was back in mid-November, prior to my trip from Oman to the UAE, back to Oman and then my departure to Canada, arriving in the winter cold, November 28th.

Got my feet planted again and wanted to continue what I started at the very beginning of the Blog, the rationale for my activism.

So, the next few excerpts will continue the theme and then I intend to right a brief history of my involvement in the Alberta Liberal Party, ending with what needs to be done to in order for the Party to become relevant once again in Alberta politics.

Bear with me as there is a point to all of this, including my self-indulgence.

Thank you,

Donn to Dusk