Posted on 07/26/2006 1:58:03 AM PDT by Clive
CAMBRIDGE - A proposed international military force in southern Lebanon should not just keep peace but root out terror, Stephen Harper said yesterday.
While the Prime Minister does not want to see Canadian soldiers as part of a peacekeeping mission in the region, embroiled in fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, he said at a news conference in southwestern Ontario that the force should seek to remove from the Middle East those non-state actors that have been able to stockpile weapons and launch attacks against Israel.
"It is the Canadian government's hope that the international community will take this opportunity to deal in a forthright manner with this problem," said Mr. Harper, singling out Hezbollah and Hamas for accumulating arsenals. "If we're going to have a permanent settlement in the Middle East, we have to stop this kind of violence. We have to stop these kinds of attacks."
But the Prime Minister said Canada does not want to enforce a peace settlement.
"Our first choice is not to have foreign troops in the region," he said, adding he believes that is a task better performed by soldiers from neighbouring countries.
Although he does not favour committing military resources to help end the fighting, he said he expects Canada to provide financial and humanitarian assistance to rebuild the areas devastated by nearly two weeks of bombings.
Almost 40 Israelis and 400 Lebanese civilians have been killed in the skirmish, and scores more on each side have been injured.
Mr. Harper also called the evacuation of Canadians from bomb-riddled Lebanon an operation without precedent in the country's history.
He praised the public servants from a range of government departments who have been working both in Canada and overseas to co-ordinate the massive rescue mission, which has involved an armada of chartered ferry boats and commercial jetliners.
"I think the public service of Canada ... is doing a fantastic job of evacuating the Canadians on a scale we've never seen before and on very short notice," he said.
One of the difficulties involved in the planning, he said, has been guessing the exact number of Canadian citizens or dual Canadian-Lebanese citizens who are seeking help fleeing the Israeli bombardments.
Although there are believed to be between 40,000 and 50,000 people with ties to Canada in Lebanon, Mr. Harper said the total number that will have been removed by the time evacuation efforts wind down in the next 24 hours will likely be closer to 10,000.
No dollar figures for the mission are available yet, but the Prime Minister said cost was no object.
"I can't give you a cost estimate at the moment," he said. "I can tell you that the instructions I gave when we began the evacuation process was that we were to spare no expense -- that if necessary, we'll fund it out of the contingency funds of the government of Canada."
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But I thought Israel was using disproportionate force
/sarc off
This guy Harper makes a lot of sense.
Please send me a FReepmail to get on or off this Canada ping list.
No Canadian PM has had this much sense and principles in my lifetime.
I'm having to pinch myself to see if I'm dreaming!
For a minute I thought this was a Scrappleface parody.
Then I remembered that Martin wasnt PM anymore.
I believe, without a doubt, that the Lord intervened in the election of 2000 to give us President Bush.
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