Global Policy Forum

By David Ljunggren

After months of hesitation, Canada finally made it clear on Tuesday that it has no intention of contributing to a U.S.-led attack on Iraq that has not been blessed by the U.N. Security Council.

President Bush has said that if the United Nations backs away from the idea of authorizing force to disarm Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, he is prepared to wage war with like-minded allies in what he calls a "coalition of the willing."

Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, wary of antagonizing the country's most important military ally and trading partner, has, until now, consistently declined to rule out contributing forces to such a coalition. But on Tuesday he told Parliament that Canada would not join an unsanctioned campaign.

"We have not been asked and we do not intend to participate in a group of the willing," he said in reply to a question asking whether Canada would join Bush's "coalition of willing countries" in an attack on Iraq.

"The policy of the government is very clear. If there has to be military activity in Iraq, we want it to be approved by the U.N. Security Council," he continued.

In a speech last week in Chicago, Chretien strongly urged Bush to tackle the Iraq crisis solely through the United Nations.

"If they (the Americans) want to go there all alone, they can go there all alone, but we say they must go with the authorization of the United Nations. If they don't, the international system of peace and security will probably be more destabilized than it need be," he said on Tuesday.

Chretien and his senior ministers have consistently said that if the United Nations does sanction an assault on Iraq, Canada will take part.

Whether Canada's over-stretched armed forces could contribute much is questionable, since last week Ottawa announced it would send up to 2,000 troops for a year to take part in a U.N. peacekeeping mission based in Kabul.

The right-wing Canadian Alliance opposition party and other conservative critics accuse Chretien of damaging Canada's traditionally close ties with the United States by not lining up more closely alongside Bush.

But Chretien is facing unrest inside his own Liberal Party over the issue and is well aware that polls show a large majority of Canadians oppose the idea of joining a U.S.-led attack outside the auspices of the United Nations.

Foreign Minister Bill Graham on Tuesday reiterated the government's view that Iraq did not have much time left to demonstrate compliance with U.N. resolutions calling on it to get rid of any weapons of mass destruction.

Earlier in the day Canadian officials rapped what they described as "unacceptable" limitations imposed upon U.N. weapons inspections in Iraq.

Jill Sinclair, the ministry's director-general in charge of policy, told the parliamentary foreign affairs committee that interviews with Iraqi scientists were not going smoothly.

"The interviewees continue to insist on taping their interviews for their own protection from Iraqi authorities. This procedure is unacceptable in terms of being able to secure freely information required by inspectors," she said.

Sinclair also criticized Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein for demanding Britain and the United States suspend their patrols over "no-fly" zones in northern and southern Iraq before U-2 surveillance planes could start flying over the country. "In our view this is an unacceptable condition placed by Iraq on such flights," said Sinclair.

Serious questions remained about what Iraq had done with stocks of chemical and biological weapons that had been uncovered by previous inspections, she said.

"We have serious concerns regarding Iraq's compliance with its disarmament obligations in this regard," she added.

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