This John Ibbitson offers an excellent summary of La Francophonie situation and closes off the discussion we had on the Bloggers Hotstove podcast.
...The Prime Minister pretty much single-handedly prevented la Francophonie from embarrassing itself last week, at its gathering in Romania. The Egyptians proposed a last-minute resolution empathizing with the suffering of the people in Lebanon, who were caught in the crossfire between Israel and Hezbollah in July.
Canada blocked the resolution, saying it must acknowledge the suffering of all peoples, since Israeli civilians had also been victims of the violence.
There was much chagrin among the Middle Eastern countries, but the leaders finally worked out a compromise resolution that met Canada's demands.
Comments (2)
A letter sent to the Globe and, oddly, not published:
‘Daniel Leblanc, in his story “PM blocks Lebanon resolution” (Sept. 30), writes that Prime Miinster Harper’s opposition, at the Francophonie Summit, to a resolution that ignored civilian casualties in Israel added “to his growing pro-Israel stand, a shift in traditional Canadian policy regarding the Middle East.”
In fact such a shift was reported almost two years ago, when Paul Martin was prime minister. The Globe’s own John Ibbitson wrote on Oct. 15, 2004, that senior government officials were angry about “a major but surreptitious shift in this nation’s foreign policy. Canada, they say, is moving away from a balanced approach toward the Middle East in favour of explicit and virtually unqualified support for Israel.”
How is it that Mr Leblanc neglected to mention Mr Martin’s shift? And have the Globe’s news editors no institutional memory?
That shift did not stay “surreptitious”. The Canadian Islamic Congress, for example, deplored the change in policy by the Martin government. Indeed, the Congress recommended that Canadian Muslims take it into consideration when deciding for whom to vote in this year’s January 23 federal election.
References: http://www.montrealmuslimnews.net/shift.htm http://www.canadianislamiccongress.com/election2006/voting.php’
I copied the letter to Mr Ibbitson and you’ll note that in his column he mentions the Martin Israel shift (maybe a coincidence).
Mark Ottawa
Posted by Mark Collins | October 3, 2006 8:47 AM
Posted on October 3, 2006 08:47
Albania and Greece are French countries? Some of the former French colonies like Vietnam have virtually no French speakers any more. Even the Wikipedia article is laughable - there is far more bickering taking place on the discussion page than actual content. Someone even brought up the Acadian expulsions as a retort to an observation made concerning the lack of will in the Francophonie to promote human rights.
There is no glory to be earned talking sense to a group of people who are brought together for nonsensical reasons. Next time (if there is a next time) Harper should send a flunky. And cut their grants, and encourage Quebec to go wild at the Francophonie and eat the whole tamale. Err, stuffed crepe.
Just to show that we’re fair, let’s punt the Commonwealth too. Arguing with Fijians over whether or not Robert Mugabe is a bad man is a waste of my money.
Posted by Anonymous | October 3, 2006 8:08 PM
Posted on October 3, 2006 20:08