Political Quotes

“When the Secretary of State gets back, we will be talking about that whole question. I have repeated my desire to try to curb proliferation. That doesn't mean we're going to refuse to sell anything to everybody. We're not going to cut off all weapons sales. We don't want to see imbalances develop. We won't want to see the threats to individual countries increased because of imbalance. But it is a subject, Jim [Jim Miklaszewski, NBC News], that we will be talking about and trying to find an answer to. I don't know what the questions are before the Congress now or the administration in detail on Israel requests. We think we've been pretty generous and fair in terms of this recent appropriation bill with the State of Israel. But I'll be reserving on that before going further until I talk to the Secretary when he gets back. I would like to think that the diminished threat to Israel--and it is significantly diminished because of what's happened in Iraq--will be a reason that we will just not have ever-increasing arms sales. You've got other countries, though, that want arms. The Saudi sale-- that was put on kind of a hold, and I just can't tell you where that stands right this minute. The Prime Minister. Jim, no one can fail to be struck by the irony of the fact that most of the hardware deployed in the Middle East was sold to the various factions by the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. This doesn't make a whole lot of sense if, on the one hand, you're trying to prevent war; on the other hand, there is the propagation of war through policies in the past that have led to this kind of development. That's why Canada believes very strongly in the policies that we have put forward in regard to the control and possibly the elimination of these instruments of mass destruction. And that's why the President is examining this, because I think there is a general view, without getting into any question of a total interdiction for the moment, that clearly a lot of these weapons--to understate the case--fell into hands that should never have had them in the first place. So, that is why our policy is predicated on that kind of activity affecting all of us. Canada adheres to that policy today. I mean, we could be much more active in that area if we wanted. We have all the technology in the world. We have all the resources we need. We could be big arms merchants. We've chosen not to be, even though it's a very lucrative business. We've chosen not to be because it's fundamentally inconsistent with our policy--to develop it, to peddle it, to finance it, and then to deplore its use. And that is where Canada has taken a very vigorous and, we think, appropriate stand. I know that in his comments earlier some weeks ago, President Bush alluded to the same problem and wants to rein in and circumscribe that problem. That's why we're where we are on this issue. Canadian Unity”