PM to attend Commonwealth summit in Uganda

Globe and Mail, Wednesday, Nov. 21, page A4.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper leaves today for Uganda and his first summit of Commonwealth leaders, an organization that Canada has shunted to the background of its foreign-policy priorities.

When Mr. Harper touches down in Kampala tomorrow afternoon, Commonwealth foreign ministers will be deciding on the most important business to face the 53-nation organization in years - the likely suspension of Pakistan for its imposition of emergency rule this month.

But Canada`s Foreign Minister, Maxime Bernier, will be halfway round the world, in Vientiane, Laos, attending a ministerial meeting of a competing organization, la Francophonie. Instead, Canada will be represented at the crucial Commonwealth meeting on Pakistan by a junior minister, Helena Guergis.

Mr. Bernier was also notable in his absence last week when the Commonwealth foreign ministers held an emergency meeting in London and issued an ultimatum to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to lift a series of anti-democratic measures or face suspension at this week`s meeting.

"This was an opportunity by Canada to be a player on an issue that is important for the security of the world and where the U.S. was not present," said Mel Cappe, Canada`s former high commissioner in London. "We`ve missed that opportunity."

Mr. Cappe, who is now president of the Montreal-based Institute for Research on Public Policy, said that Canada`s lack of interest in the Commonwealth is not new. In the four years he was in London, not a single Canadian foreign minister attended any Commonwealth meetings, instead leaving representation to senior officials who were knowledgeable on the issues but don`t have the same political clout as leading ministers.

At a briefing last week for journalists travelling with Mr. Harper to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), as the summit is known, a senior official insisted that Mr. Bernier`s decision to avoid the Commonwealth meetings was simply a question of unfortunate timing.

Canada, she noted, is the second largest financial contributor to the organization and participates in a variety of Commonwealth-sponsored activities, including election observation and capacity building.

Tim Shaw, a professor at Royal Roads University and former chairman of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies at University of London, said he believes that Canada`s interest in the organization has faded since Canadian Arnold Smith was the first Commonwealth secretary-general in the 1960s.

"It was before we joined the G8 and before we joined the OAS [Organization of American States]," Prof. Shaw said in an interview from Kampala.

Prof. Shaw said he thinks the Commonwealth deserves respect because it does what other international organizations, like the UN and la Francophonie won`t - suspend members for failing to abide by democratic principles.

"Regimes that misbehave don`t deserve a seat," he said.

Pakistan was suspended from the Commonwealth from 1999 to 2004 and members as diverse as Nigeria and Fiji have also been excluded from the councils of the Commonwealth in the past.

Zimbabwe was suspended in 2002 over human-rights and electoral abuses by President Robert Mugabe and when Commonwealth leaders renewed the suspension at a CHOGM the following year, Mr. Mugabe reacted by pulling Zimbabwe out entirely.

Gen. Musharraf is not expected to attend the Kampala gathering.