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Opening More Doors Quickly

Welcoming remarks  at a Roundtable on Mongolia-Canada Relations
Hon. David Kilgour, P.C., M.P.
Secretary of State (Asia-Pacific) and M.P. (Edmonton Southeast)
Lester B. Pearson Building
, Ottawa, ON

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 - AR - A -  LAA

 

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