Page 48 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 12 February 1991
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The Chief Minister, in his speech, which contained many fine thoughts, expressed the hope that our people - I take that also to refer to our people from Canberra - will return safe from that war. Certainly we hope that. But, if that is the sentiment we want to espouse, would it not be better if they had never gone?
I want to conclude on what, for me, is a sad note - on what I regard as blasphemy on the part of President Bush. On one day I heard him saying at media conferences, "We will bomb Iraq into submission if that is the way we have to go", and on the next day he was calling for a national day of prayer for peace. He put those two statements together over two days. How can you describe it as anything but blasphemy? He says, "God is on our side", a cry often heard around the world.
Mr Speaker, there were other solutions. Who knows how successful they would have been? They may have taken some time. But who can say that those solutions would have been any less effective than this dreadful solution that has now been imposed? Mr Speaker, I am prepared to stand up and say that I will rally for peace and not for war.
MR STEVENSON (4.53): Mr Speaker, I believe that the majority of Canberrans are against the invasion and occupation of Kuwait by Iraq. I also believe that Canberrans support our troops, whether or not they believe that they should be there. Saddam Hussein has been called many things, and I do not doubt that a lot of them are true and a lot of them are false. Mr Stefaniak said that all other attempts at peaceful resolution had failed. That is absolutely 100 per cent false, and it will ever remain false, though the information will be clouded in time. But let me make this point: Saddam Hussein said that he would withdraw from Kuwait if Israel withdrew from the West Bank in Palestine.
Bush said that every avenue for peace had been exhausted. That is not true - absolutely not true. Was that an REASONable request for Hussein to make, leaving aside the basis on which he was making it? The UN indeed, as Mr Wood said, had resolution 272 and others before its Assembly for Israel to do just that. I too, and many others who have looked at the record of the United Nations, will have extreme concerns about a law for one but not for the other. Lebanon was attacked and Iraq was bombed, and the United Nations did nothing.
For over 50 years the USSR has invaded country after country. Poland was one, at the start of World War II, that many people have forgotten about. Most people think it was Germany. You may as well say that it was the USSR if you are going to pick one of the two partners out. Of course, it was both. It is unfortunate that, in time, history is written by some who have less concern for the truth than for political gain.
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