Page 4764 - Week 15 - Thursday, 21 November 1991
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problem encouraged one of the remaining reasonably hardline communist regimes, the Federal regime in Yugoslavia, to intervene militarily. Had the West sent a different message early on, that could have been quite different.
Mr Berry: All they needed was a bit of oil. If they had had a bit of oil, there would have been some intervention.
MR STEFANIAK: Mr Berry mutters something about intervention. Unfortunately, there is cause, if one really does want world peace, for intervention. The intervention should be by the United Nations, because that is the body that was set up after the disastrous experience with the League of Nations, which was a toothless tiger. In fact, it probably was not even a tiger; it was completely toothless. The idea of the United Nations was to form a body where the nations of the world could band together and, if need be, as a last resort, intervene militarily to stop people getting at each other's throats.
I think it is tragic that no message was sent to the Yugoslav Government to prevent the tragedy we see unfolding before our very eyes, and have seen for some months in Croatia. I worry greatly about what will occur in that troubled part of the world. It brings home the fact that we still have a very long way to go before we get any sort of new world order or, indeed, before a body such as the United Nations is truly effective. The actions of some of the Western countries have been quite deplorable in terms of their basic gutlessness about getting involved.
I worry now about what might happen in Cambodia, for example, because it is much closer to home and Australian troops have been committed. We have a supposed settlement there, but one of the greatest monsters still alive in the world, Pol Pot, and the infamous Khmer Rouge are coming back into Phnom Penh, which terrifies the Kampuchean people. We have Australian troops involved there, among other peacekeeping forces - and not very many either. The situation there is potentially very dangerous too.
I hope that, should that develop into another bloodbath and the Khmer Rouge take over again, the Western world especially will get a little bit of backbone and stomach and intervene and do the job properly, getting rid of that monster and his monstrous supporters. The killing of so many people by so few in such a very short time is pretty well unparalleled in history, certainly in the history of the twentieth century.
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