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The Hon. Douglas Roche, O.C. L'Hon. Douglas Roche, O.C. Ottawa, K1A 0A4 Canada
MEDIA ADVISORY
September 3, 2002
Senator Douglas Roche, O.C., believes the current situation with regard to Iraq is of grave concern and requires immediate debate in the Canadian Parliament. Accordingly, he intends to give Notice of an Inquiry in the Senate when the Senate resumes on Tuesday, September 17th and will call the attention of the Senate to the urgent need for Canada to work to avoid war in Iraq by helping the United Nations determine whether Iraq possesses or is in the process of acquiring weapons of mass destruction, given:
(i) the increased momentum of the U.S. Administration in its calls for a pre-emptive attack on the regime of Saddam Hussein without evidence that Iraq possesses or is acquiring weapons of mass destruction; and
(ii) that the United Nations Security Council is the only authority that can sanction a military attack on Iraq and, in attacking Iraq without such authorization, the United States would be instigating a dangerous precedent of legitimizing the unilateral use of force based on the perception of threat; and
(iii) that Resolution 687 of 1991 requires any further action against Iraq to be within a multilateral context for the management and elimination of armaments including a stronger Biological Weapons Convention and universal adherence to the Chemical Weapons Convention and obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; and
(iv) Canada's longstanding policy of supporting the United Nations system and the elimination of weapons of mass destruction.
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