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Opening More
Doors Quickly
Welcoming
remarks at a Roundtable on
Mongolia-Canada Relations
14 October 2003
Check
against delivery Bonjour. Before
beginning, I'll be giving this talk
in English, as there are evidently
no translation services available, and my Mongolian is a little rusty. Welcome.
Bienvenu à tout-le-monde.
And a particularly warm welcome, of course, to our Mongolian guests, who
have wisely arrived on the weekend when our fall leaves are at their most
beautiful and the temperatures in the other least hot capital on earth are
almost perfect.. UG -
LUU - NII MEND
HUR - GIE! (Good morning) KAN
- A - DAD TAV - TAI
MOR-IL -NO UU! (Welcome
to Canada) As
mentioned, it's a little rusty. I am
enormously pleased to be here with you all today. It only seems like yesterday that some of us, including
Ambassador Batsukh, I returned from Ulaanbaatar. The visit was undoubtedly one
of the most memorable trips I have ever made as a Secretary of State.
Hailing from Western Canada, I immediately felt very comfortable in
Mongolia's wide open spaces. It didn't come as a surprise when we were told that
Alberta and Mongolia actually share the same moniker, both being referred to as
"Blue Sky Country." The
Mongolian government and its people truly welcomed us as their own.
We learnt that for thousands of years, up to the present day, doors on
gers - the traditional Mongolian dwelling - are always open.
After travelling a long distance, often in a harsh climate and over
difficult terrain, a visitor need only enter, and she or he is welcomed warmly
by the inhabitants - stranger or not.
The same principle certainly held true during our stay in Mongolia;
I like to think that we were welcomed as good friends. There's
a saying in French: Soyez chez nous, comme chez vous.
Roughly translated, it means: make
yourself feel at home. It's
with this in mind that you've all been invited to the home of my wife and myself
this evening - at 5PM - come right on in, the door will be open. This
roundtable hopefully begins a new dimension in the relations between our two
countries. While in Ulaanbaatar,
the Foreign Minister suggested that we try and institutionalize such meetings,
to ensure that there is regular, open, and frank dialogue about how we can
deepen the bonds between our two countries. I
left Mongolia without a doubt that these bonds are sound and growing.
It has been thirty years since we established diplomatic relations
but really, it's been in the last 15 years -- since Mongolians without
any violence turned to democracy -- that our cooperation
really began to flourish. There
is enormous potential for our relations to grow in the coming years in any
number of areas: natural resource extraction and management; environmental
policy and conservation; agricultural policy; peacekeeping; and capacity
building in civil society to name but a few.
Civil
society and the related theme of democratic development were
front and centre during my visit. Mongolia,
you should all know, did a superb job of hosting the 5th International
Conference on New or Restored Democracies.
Representatives
from about 120 nations, including 73 parliamentarians and more than 200 leaders
from a range of non-government organizations, attended the ICNRD, to discuss the
prospects and challenges for democracy worldwide. Many of the participants were
from restored and new democracies seeking ways to consolidate themselves, but
those of us from traditional ones probably learned as much-or more-about the
evolving cultures of democracy as anyone. And
what more appropriate country to host such an important event?
Following almost two centuries of Chinese domination-long after Ghengis
Khan had sacked Beijing for a full devastating month during 1211 before going on
to establish a Pax Mongolica stretching from
Korea to Iran-and almost seven decades as a Soviet republic, its people
opted for democracy and full independence after 1990, evidently without a single
pane of glass being broken during the transition. Prime
Minister Enkhbayar in his welcoming address referred to Mongolia's democratic
renaissance, which included harmonizing the legal system with democracy,
allowing about 2500 NGOs- astonishingly one for every thousand Mongols (and you
thought Canadians were active in civil society!) living within the country-to
spring up, ending indoctrination in schools and the state-controlled media,
attacking corruption, and permitting the private sector to account today for
nearly four fifths of the economy. Near
the end of the conference, we received word of the terrible attack on Sweden's
Foreign Minster, Anna Lindh. Sweden's
senior delegate, ambassador Bengt Save-Soderbergh, took the floor to say that
his minister was a strong supporter of the democracy movement and that we should
continue our work with renewed vigour. The
drafting of the final declaration and work plan was completed only after many
hours with the help of about forty delegates.
The final gavel came down about two hours after the death of Ms. Lindh
had been announced and a moment of silence had been observed. In a final act,
delegates adopted a strong declaration about democracy and plan of action to
secure it better wherever it exists. However,
the proof, as they say, will be in the pudding. In other words, the effectiveness of our actions in Mongolia
can only be measured by the nature of our follow-up. As our friend Ambassador Save-Soderbergh reminded us,
"Democracy can neither be imported, nor exported. But it can, however, be
supported. And that is what the ICNRDs can achieve." Mongolia's
Foreign Minister offered to establish a "friends of the chair" group,
which would work together prior to the next ICNRD, presently scheduled for 2006
in Doha, Qatar. We look forward to
his letter outlining his ideas on how this will work. Some areas of cooperation this group could explore include
how we can monitor genuine
democratic progress in countries; how we can develop international, democratic
norms; how we can better share experiences and learn from each other; and how
the ICNRD process fits in with the UN and with similar processes such as the
Community of democracies. Whatever
happens, it is very important that the ICNRD have measurable outcomes and remain
as inclusive as possible. With
that, I'll cede the floor to my colleague, Peter MacArthur, so that we can get
to the real business of the day. Thank
you for giving me the opportunity to open this Roundtable.
Merci. BAY
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