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Canada to put own stamp on peace process, Cotler says By MATTHEW KALMAN Special to The Globe and Mail Wednesday, December 22, 2004 - Page A15 JERUSALEM -- Justice Minister Irwin Cotler sketched out a new Canadian doctrine of international co-operation yesterday, aiming to promote justice and democracy in the pursuit of peace while safeguarding individual rights. Mr. Cotler, whose weeklong tour of the Middle East is the first by a Canadian minister in 18 months, said Canada can help bring peace to the troubled region by promoting democracy and human rights while combatting terrorism. He said Canada can make a unique contribution in the international arena by sharing the experience gained in formulating the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. "Helping democratization processes and building national justice systems that have their own peace dividends at the end of the road could be Canada's modest contribution to Middle East peacemaking," he said. Mr. Cotler said Prime Minister Paul Martin's call for the international community to intervene to stop Sudan's humanitarian crisis has helped formulate the duty to protect: the responsibility of governments to intervene and stop humanitarian catastrophes. "The duty to protect has become a signature expression of Canadian commitment to an international humanitarian-law doctrine," he said. "We sponsored the international commission on state sovereignty and humanitarian intervention, to the effect that when a threshold of mass atrocity is reached, of humanitarian catastrophe, there is a responsibility on the part of the international community to intervene and protect the victims of that humanitarian catastrophe." The minister, who is visiting Israeli, Palestinian, Egyptian and Jordanian officials during his trip, said he intends to promote the "justice component" of a Canadian human-rights agenda as applied to the Middle East. "Democracy is perhaps the best guarantee of peace, because as studies have shown, democracies don't make war against each other," Mr. Cotler told reporters. However, his deceptively simple message is being delivered in a region where democracy is in short supply, human rights come under frequent attack and the fight against terrorism often involves the use of torture. The minister said he is interested only in "a justice agenda," and refused to comment on matters of foreign affairs. But the four keynote speeches he plans to deliver this week in Cairo, Jerusalem, Ramallah and Amman carry bold political overtones. Yesterday, Mr. Cotler condemned terrorism as "an assault on the security of a democracy and an assault on the fundamental rights of its inhabitants: namely the right to life, liberty and security of the person." Human rights and freedoms, however, must be upheld in the process of fighting terrorism, he added. "The enforcement and application of anti-terrorism law must always comport with the rule of law. Torture must always and everywhere be condemned," he said, an oblique challenge to the Egyptian, Jordanian, Israeli and Palestinian governments, all of which make systematic use of detention without trial and have flirted with torture. "I do not see any contradiction between the protection of security and the protection of human rights." Comments
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