H. E. Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban, Minister of Expatriates,  Lecturing At Toronto University, Canada.

22 Sept. 2005

The Moderator (Dr. Atef Kubrusi):

 I'm totally delighted that we have with us distinguished minister who's so distinguished in being outspoken and a spokesperson for the Syrian government and for the Syrian people. Dr. Shaaban is an accomplished academician. She taught for twenty years. She received her Ph.D. from Warwick university in U.K. and she didn't only taught in Damascus but she also taught in England and taught in Eastern Michigan at the United States. She was the vice president of the Arab Writers Union. She is an accomplished writer. Her columns are literary a weekly expectation in many journals. She is also an accomplished author with several books. She's also a genius quality in improvement women in the Middle East. It's no small wonder that last year she was chosen as the most distinguished woman in the Arab world by the Arab League. And in this year she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for her own work in the services of peace in the Middle East. I'm also delighted to tell you that Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban is a minister of Syrian Expatriates and also worked before her ministerial job as the director of media in the Foreign Affairs Ministry. And I'm also delighted that she is here to speak to this distinguished audience, as a minister she is also a friend of the community. Her ministry draws bridges between expatriates and their home country. She always insists on you, on the expatriates, to love your country and to love Canada, there is no contradiction whatsoever. And we here in Canada believes that there is a brutal way to isolate Syria. I want you to welcome Her Excellency Madam Shaaban.

Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban:

مساء الخير جميعاً. أولاً اسمحوا لي أن أشكر قنصلنا الفخري هنا السيد ياسر خردجي و الدكتور عاطف قبرصلي و السيدة هند قبوات على كل الجهود التي بذلوها كي أصل إلى هنا، لم يكن من السهل، الحقيقة، أن أصل إلى هنا نتيجة عدّة إنشغالات و لكن أنا سعيدة جداً أنني أتيت.

In my first day in Montreal in the evening they asked me how long have you been here. I said two years because I felt I've been here for two years, I felt I found in the Canadian people and in the Canadian government all what I aspire to see the world over. The way to preserve our culture and they allowed us to love the countries we belong to. And I say the countries because we can love more than one country. Loving one country doesn't exclude the others quite the contrary loving one country means the capability of loving the others, and those who don't love don't love at all. And as you know the Syrian policy is to allow always the dual nationality so no Syrian has to choose between the country that he or she chooses to reside in and  between his or her mother home or between his or her cultural heritage. So, I'm really delighted to seeing you to get to know Canadian officials and Canadian people and I'll certainly carry the message with me that Canada should be partner number one with Syria in everything we do.

   I would like to thank many of my friends like Dr. Nabil Batal. I would like to start by saying that in this age of communication and fast communication and in this diversity of media I feel that the personal contact is the best thing to do. In fact because of this fast media that is capable not only of informing but also it's capable of miss-informing. Nowadays in the Arab world where we don't have really many outlets to express our opinion and to express the reality I feel we do have an obligation to go around and tell people of the world what we stand for and what is the real situation in our region.

     I think there is a big difference between what Arabs see about their situation between what's happening in the Middle East and between what western people see. And unless western people see what's going on in our region they can't terminate their opinion and they can't support us. I have many times to say for the Syrian audience and for the Arab audience that there is no person in the world who would accept to see deliberate killing of a child, and there is no person in the world who would accept to see an innocent family taken out of their home and their own past being destroyed. But we have to take this message to people around the world  and to tell them what's exactly going on not only in order to sympathize with us but also to have a unified stand in order to make the world and the entire region a better place for the future generations.

     Most of you read in the newspapers all the talk about Syria and all the stress on Syria and all the accusations to Syria and I would like you to allow me to address the issue of what Syria stands for and why the relation is strained between Syria and the United States at this moment and what is or are the solution(s) hopefully.

     If I can take you  a little bit very very briefly  to remind you that Syria was the first country to stand against Saddam Husein, our borders were closed to Saddam Husein for twenty years in the time that the United States were supporting Saddam in his war against Iran. Syria stood against the invasion of Kuwait and even it sent its troops to help in liberating Kuwait because Syria believes in "No Occupation". We believe occupation is the ultimate humiliation of human beings and we practice what we say.

    It was Syria who launched the Madrid Peace Process in nineteen ninety one. I was the interpretator of the Late President Hafez Al-Assad when the secretary of states then Mr. James Baker came to Syria and said to President Assad "President Assad I have no schedule for this meeting, I came only to say thank you because without you the peace process couldn't be launched". We spent hundreds of hours negotiating the terms of reference of Madrid, and we spent tens of hours negotiating after Madrid until January 2000 in Sheverdstown. At one time Ms. Madline Aulbright and myself sat over lunch and decided that in two weeks  peace will be signed between Syria and Israel. And if you want to know why peace wasn't signed between Syria and Israel I will not refer you to any book that any Syrian wrote but I will refer you to the book that President Bill Clinton wrote about the peace process and what he said about the Syrians stand in Sheverdstown. He said the Syrian government was forthcoming extremely decided to make peace, it was Barak who was worried about the elections in Israel that backed down and refused to reach a peace settlement with Syria.

    Before the war on Iraq our Foreign Minister and I was accompanying him came four times in February 2003 to the Security Council in New York. And our stand as a member with Germany, France, Russia and Canada of course was that war shouldn't be launched unless there is a strong evidence tat there is WMD in Iraq, and all what it needs is only six months to know if there is WMD in Iraq or not. I wanted to get you back to all these and to all what media wrote is just to remind you that what media writes is not always solid evidence. You remember how much the media wrote about WMD in Iraq, about carrying the WMD to Syria, about Iraqi officials escaping to Syria, and I would like to make another point that one son of the  Iraqi family turned out to be in another Arab country and that was fine and no crime has been committed but it's only a crime if he or she is in Syria.

    So, I will tell you why is Syria targeted. Now, two years after the war on Iraq what President Bashar Al-Assad said in his letter turned out to be true; he said two things: first, there is no WMD in Iraq because after ten years of embargo and sanctions there will be no WMD in Iraq. Second, he said, launching a war on Iraq will increase the fertile ground for the terrorists. And that's what happened.

    We don't believe that wars can bring anything except killing innocence human lives and freedom and happiness. That's the only thing wars can do. It's relatively easy to destroy but it's very difficult to build. We have to concentrate on building rather than on destroying.

    The story between Syria and Lebanon we are all familiar with is that Syria implemented the Security Council Resolutions 1559. our troops are out of Lebanon, our intelligent is out of Lebanon, and anyone who killed Al-Harriri targeting both Syria and Lebanon. Because we believe the security of Syria and Lebanon is connected with each other. And the prosperity of Lebanon is the prosperity of Syria. Regardless of what happens now or later the fate of Syria and Lebanon are linked. We are two Arab countries. We've all the history, literature and culture and the interests, also, of our people are interconnected.

      After what you've hear about the infiltration into Iraq from the Syrian  government we received so many delegations from the United States and Britain and we tried our best to convince them that these borders are common borders, after all the Americans share these borders with us now, that the occupied Iraq, and about four weeks ago the Syrian government invited all diplomatic and media people in Damascus to go to the borders and see what did Syria do on the borders and to see that Syria has deployed ten thousands troops on the borders while the United States deployed none. I think it's the United States who is more capable of deploying troops. And instead of blaming that infiltrators are going from Syria into Iraq in the last four mouths we had five terrorists attacks in Syrian cities. I think all the countries around, Syria, Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia are extremely worried about terrorism spreading into our countries. And whatever happens in Iraq, whether we liked it or not, affects our countries. We are the neighboring countries of Iraq and our countries are made of the same religious and ethnics that Iraq made of and I think anything that happens in Iraq affect our countries.

     In spite of all what had happened in Iraq before we never heard Iraqi people sorting about each other with each other are Sunnis, Shiite and Kurds. They were all Iraqis through history.

     This new language that's coming to our region is a very dangerous language. The Middle East is a region in which all religions have lived beautifully together through out history. Two days ago I was in Montreal in the Museum of Fine Arts and there was a beautiful Syrian mosaic there from the fifth century A.D. and which was taken from a church and I would like here to thank the Canadian government because they've returned this mosaic that was stolen from Syria, and it was one of them that was left alone to the museum. You could easily see the harmony in the mosaic and the same harmony that the followers of the region live in Syria.

     One question that had been addressed in Clinton Global Initiative to which I was invited last week was what could Islam do to satisfy the west and I said we have to reverse the question what could the west do to be able to live with Islam because for the Middle East region we have no problem. It's only natural that always Muslims, Jewish and Christians should live together. It's the west first experience with multi-religions and multi-cultural society and they didn't do very well so far with this experience. Canada did extremely well because it allowed people to enjoy their heritage, to feel proud of their identity but not to prevent them of going to schools because of putting the scarf on and not to think that all Muslims are terrorists because there are few terrorists whom they helped them years ago and now they turned against them. In the 1979 and in the 1980s when they were killing our innocent citizens in Syria they were called human rights activists in the west. They were given money and support and now they are called Syrians!! The same people twenty five years ago were called human rights activists. They were putting explosives in our buses, houses and streets they were not Syrians at that time, they were human rights activists, now they are exercising the same thing whether in Madrid or anywhere else and those people become Syrians.

     So, I would like to draw your attention to the way things portrayed in the media. Some of you might think that we didn't establish mechanism, we didn't build the democratic system, we have all this percentage of unemployment, all of these are true. We do have a thousand problem to be solved in the  Middle East and in the Arab world. As a Minister of the government and as someone who served in the Syrian government for years I know how many problems we have, and I know how much work we need but certainly the war on Iraq doesn't help. It certainly puts us backwards not forwards. And certainly violence in the region is not going to help. The only thing that will help us is to encourage development in the region, investment in the region and first of all to make peace in the region, because making peace is the first step towards any decent life that people in the region want to have. Someone will ask me while I'm making this statement that do you mean that the Syrian government is waiting to make peace before you make your reform, I say NO. We're working every single day on our reform in everywhere we can but western world can not prevent us from having technology and then blaming us of  not having fast internet, you know. The west is either preferred to give us the technology we need and then we use it and come in match with the world or not to blame the victim for being victimized.

      That's really what is happening. Twenty thousands Palestinian houses were destroyed in the last four years and when the western delegations go to Israel they show them the difference between the deluxe buildings that the Israelis have and the Palestinian refugees who were made refugees on their own territories. I mean they destroyed their houses, they took their land, their water and then accused people of being backwards. That's really very difficult logic and very difficult to tackle or to address.

     I think the Israeli occupation of our territories is the cancer of the region. And unless this cancer is addressed there's going to be no peace, no prosperity and certainly no democracy in the Middle East.

    In 1991 when we started the peace process in Madrid Syria said let's have one Arab delegation and we delayed the conference for two days in order to have one Arab delegation. Why?  Because we have the same problems; all of us have some of our territories occupied, there is a big problem, the Palestinian problem, the Palestinian refugees, Jerusalem, so, we said, let's us sit and do it together. The Israelis refused and they said that they can't handle all the tracks together. You can't handle five fronts if you're going to war but it's certainly easier to handle one delegation rather than five if you are making peace and if you want to make peace, it's much easier.

     In 1993 the Israelis signed Oslo agreement with the Palestinians, and when President Hafez Al-Assad knew about the agreement he said that it's not going to last because it didn't respond to the minimum rights of the Palestinian people. And I would love to differentiate between government and people: the objective is not the government signs a peace agreement the objective is that the peace agreement should reflect the interests of people because it's people who are to defend this agreement or to reject it in the future. Governments go and die and change but the people stay and remain. That's why Syria was insisting, and still insists today, on a Just and Comprehensive Peace in the Middle East; a Just Peace because people around the world accept nothing less than justice. Justice is something that human beings aspire to have, it doesn't matter how long they prevent them from having justice. Comprehensive Peace is because all Arab countries who have problems with their territories being occupied by Israel feel with each other; we have the same language, the same culture, the same history and certainly the same aspiration. Whether Egypt made peace agreement with Israel or not, whether Jordan made peace agreement with Israel or not Arab people will not rest unless a comprehensive peace is made with Israel.

   I'm someone who believes in peace and I've worked for ten years for peace, and as I said at the beginning at one point we thought that in two weeks we are going to achieve peace. And now there is an excellent initiative on the table; twenty two Arab countries put an initiative on the table in Beirut in March 2002 and said the twenty two Arab countries are ready to make peace with Israel if the Israelis will withdraw to the lines of 4June 1967 and this is the resolution 242 and 338. you know, at one point countries are threaten to apply resolutions immediately on the other hand other resolutions laid un-attendant for thirty years. So this is the double standards that Arab and Muslim people are suffering of. All Arab countries reiterated the initiative in March 2005 in Algiers and said that the twenty two Arab countries will sign a peace agreement with Israel if Israel withdraws to the lines of 4June 1967. And  in my point of view resolution 242  gives Israel more than resolution 194 according to which Israel was created. And the Arab said the resolution 242 is fine because we want a solution. Immediately after the announcement of the Arab countries Sharon went on T.v. and said "no withdrawal to the lines of 4 June 1967, no rights for the refugees and no Jerusalem for the Palestinians". In the last five years one million Jewish have been immigrated to live in Palestine. How could you bring one million people from all around the world  to live in Palestine while the Palestinian people having their houses destroyed and transferred from Palestine.

     For the last four years the only feeling I had was that Palestinian children being killed, Palestinian leaders and scientists being killed after announcing a plan by the Israeli government their houses destroyed, the apartheid wall being build, the Palestinian land being taken. The only feeling I had is the feeling of purge of red Indians. That is what's happening in Palestine, it is a genocide. Whether the world accepts that or not this is the reality.

     You know, it's no good giving apology from twenty years from now and taking one Palestinian to the stage to see how these people live. We seeing now that there is a genocide in Palestine. There is people transferred from their territories, from their land, from their water, from their school. That's what is happening. And this happening by brutal force. That's the logic that's built now; those who have the force decide the terms of the day, and that's what we would like the international communities to recognize.

     I would like to recognize people from all states who are working to build a better future for the Middle East. They are Jewish people, Christian people and Muslim people. There are Israeli people who are working, writing and having websites to break the silence and speaking about this genocide and calling attention of the Israelis to what is happening. Do you know why?? Because they know that this is very bad for their future generations because this creates anger and this is no good for anyone. The only thing that's good is to create love and peace. If I were an Israeli I would lobby my government to make peace now with the Arabs. If they are saying that the Arabs are weak what do they want more to make peace with them?? But neither the Arabs nor any people in the world give up their rights. We love to reach peace through dialogue. That's what Syria is standing for. Syria is standing to play a constructive role for peace in the Middle East.

    The other danger that's calling all of us is the danger of our archeology, of our identity and this is something nobody talks about.

    What happened in Iraq, you know, beside the absolute lack of security, beside kidnapping that women cannot go to school, beside killing Iraqi doctors and scientists and intellectuals, beside all of these there is a huge looting of Iraqi heritage and I've not read that in the Syrian newspapers, I read it in LATIMES that Babylon has been looted and destroyed. If we loose Babylon we cannot have another Babylon.

    In Naples the palace of Abdul Hadi that is many hundreds years old was raid by Israeli bulldozers. Churches, mosques are being totally destroyed. That's our identity, that's our heritage and that's who we are. So, if we are the pride of that how could we prove in the future who we are??

    The other danger that's in our region is what's happening in Iraq now. If God forbids a civil war in Iraq the region will be in a very very bad shape in the future. I heard from Iraqi people that Shiite young men go to Al Sistani everyday and ask him to allow them to retaliate because in the last three months thousands of Shiite have been killed in Iraq. And those who are killing Shiite want them to retaliate in order to launch a civil war in Iraq between Shiite and Sunnis. If God doesn't forbid that from happening nobody could stop that.  And this will be extremely dangerous for us, for Europe and for the United States.

     What I'm saying here is that we are really in one boat as human beings. And whatever is happening in the Middle East you will see that this will have its affect in Europe, Canada or the United States. And really we have to think of each other as one human family. And have only to implement the role of justice and respect for people. Have anybody dare to mention the names of those Iraqi who were killed??  Over a hundred thousands innocent Iraqi people had been killed so far. We don't know their names. Nobody mentions them even on our Arab satellites. They say seventy Iraqis were killed, thirty Iraqis were killed, twenty Iraqis were killed. You know, I'm as a mother of children God may forbid killing one of my children, whole my life will be miserable and terrible and nothing else in the world I would love to live for. That's not a joke that seventy people being killed everyday and twenty and thirty. That's a disaster. And we all have to feel that. That's a disaster. If we want to relieve ourselves and say that's an Islamic terrorism I say there's no such a thing as Islamic terrorism, there is only terrorism that is no religion, no color and no nationality. It's a crime only, it's a crime against humanity wherever it happens against whoever it happens.

    Why when Oklahoma explosion happened nobody went to the Bible to see why this Christian man did explode it?? He killed seventy people. When the IRA was bombarding London in the 1970s nobody said this is a Catholic problem because it's not a Catholic problem, it's a political problem and they recognized it as such and they solved it as such and they talked to the terrorists. But now they don't talk to anybody. With the IRA they talked and negotiated and they reached a solution. So, don't think of the Arab-Israeli conflict, of what's happening in Iraq as a political problem?? Because it's a political problem. It's not a religious problem. No Muslim can be  a real Muslim without believing in all prophets; Jewish, Christians and Muslims: Abraham, Jesus, Isaac.. all of them are parts of our religion. They are part of the Islamic religion. And what those terrorists doing they are undermining all secular people, all people who believe in harmony, who believe in tolerance and what the west is doing is strengthening the fundamentalists and weakening the secular people.

    A friend of mine from Iraq came to me a few days I departure to the United States and it was a few days from the eleventh of September and he told me that in Iraq neither the Shiite  nor the Sunnis nor the Kurds are targeted only secular people are targeted. They wanted it to be free for the fundamentalism. Is that the future of the world as we want it to be?? Is that what we are trying to encourage?? But it's the double standards that's being used and this only encourages and strengthen fundamentalists.

      Terrorists never mentioned Palestine before but they're using it now as a pretext. All Muslim and Arab people do feel that they are the mood of Palestine and Iraq. And the only reason why Syria is targeted now is that just because Syria said we want to implement the Security Council resolutions. We want international legitimacy in the Middle East.

     And if you want to compare between what the Israeli want to do shaking hands with the Pakistani foreign minister, shaking hands with the foreign minister of Qatar, so now, why all these dramas if twenty two Arab countries are ready to shake hands with you now if you will withdraw to the lines of 4 June 1967?? So this is the question because they don't want to withdraw to the lines of 1967 and they don't want to withdraw from our lands and our water and they want to make peace with the Arabs and to make them forget about the Israeli occupation.

     I'm sure you find my terms about Israeli occupation strange but you wouldn't find it strange two or three years ago because I read the media plan in 2002 which says: Never mention occupation. Consider every Palestinian resistant as a terrorist. Always refer to the Israeli and Palestinians but never mention the Israeli occupation. I'm sure you find my terms about the Israeli occupation as something strange, that is the reality which is never mentioning by the media nowadays!!  And that's deliberate and designed. All Palestinian people who were killed were referred to as "militants" although if they are eight hundreds children or five hundred women among them. Breaking silence which is an Israeli website said eight percent of them never carried arms, it's an Israeli website it's not my statistic. And yet all of them are "militants" they say ten Palestinian militants, two Palestinian militants were killed.

         So, that's really the only reason why Syria is targeted. It's not because they want democracy in Syria because the proof is that they are supporting countries who have less democracy than Syria; we have parliament, we have election, we have unions and we're trying hard and we know that we are not perfect but we need help and we need investment. We don't need embargo and we don't need building walls.

    You know, in Clinton Global Initiative Condalizza Rice said that opening borders immediately doubled and tripled trade returns between countries. Well, why then asking Arab countries to close borders; Saudi Arabia should close borders with Yemen, Qatar should close with Saudi Arabia, Syria should close with Iraq and with Lebanon and Jordan?? Why?? We want to open to each other. It takes me ten minutes by plane to reach Beirut, one hour to reach Cairo, one hour to reach Baghdad. It's a very small area that we all live in. we share the same language and the same history. Why aren't we allowed to live with each other and to open borders?? It's because there is no peace that's why we're not allowed.

    After the second world war, and I would conclude with this, the United States decided that they have columinism as their enemies, what did they do?? What was the answer?? Marshal plan in Germany and development in Japan. Now, they have Katrina in New Orliens and they discovered that they have huge poverty and a huge percentage of crime what did they do??  Investment and Marshal plan.

     Suppose we have all these problems they're talking about what do we need?? Investment, Marshal plan and development. We don't need threat and we don't need embargo and we don't need sanctions.

     Syria is the country that's ready to work for peace today because it believes in peace. To start dialogue today because it believes in dialogue. I think it's an obligation for the super powers to keep the dialogue going and to reach solutions through dialogue rather than through wars. Wars do not get us anywhere. We knew before they start they it won't get them anywhere in Iraq. Quite the contrary the Iraqi people had paid a huge price for this war. They were suffering under Saddam but if you think of Iraq in the 1960s and the early 1970s Iraq was the pride of our nation; there are the scientists, the intellectuals, the universities and the status of women was very good. You know, we have a proverb in Arabic used to say "Cairo writes, Beirut publishes and Iraq reads". Iraqi people are the readers, the intellects. Now, what happened to Iraq?? It's doom. It's a country destroy and this is not an exaggeration.

     Even though the neighboring countries of Iraq are ready to work to have a solution, because there must be a solution and there had to be a solution that keeps the sovereignty of Iraq, the dignity of Iraq and the independence of Iraq.

     What president of Spain suggested sounds great; an alliance between the west and the Muslim world to find a solution for suffering in the Middle East. Syria supported and supports that initiative. Syria supports international legitimacy, supports working for peace and supports all the Middle East to be free of all the mass destruction weapons because we want to make the Middle East a happy area, a prosperate area  for the future generations.

    I know many people benefit from the state of war both in the Middle East and in the west. And it's these people who try to prevent a peace solution but I trust people like yourselves and I know that there are many people in the world who would  love to work for peace  and prosperity.

Thank you very much