Canada and war on Iraq. (News in Brief: Canada).

Ottawa--Canada has not seen such confusion and double-talk on the part of Prime Minister Jean Chretien as regards the country's stand on Iraq. For over two months, throughout December and January, Ministers of the Crown kept contradicting one another about whether Canada would wait for U.N. approval before going to war against Iraq or join the threatened go-it-alone approach of the Americans. Meanwhile, Parliament was ignored until finally a discussion was permitted on January 29, the day after U.S. President George Bush delivered his State of the Union address.

By January 24, the situation had deteriorated so much that two large dailies carried opposite front page headlines: "Chretien supports U.S. Push to war" (Star, Jan 24/03); and "PM to Bush: hold off on war" (Globe & Mail). As Andrew Coyne put it in a National Post column that same day: "For their own sake, as much as for the country's, the Chretien Liberals had better hope the United Nations Security Council ends up voting in favour of invading Iraq. Barring such a miracle, we have the making of a foreign-policy disaster, or a domestic crisis, or both.

Canada of course, is between a rock and a hard place. If the government supports unilateral action by the United States, it offends many of its own supporters who believe that to be immoral. If it refuses to support the Americans in going it alone without UN approval, it fears American economic retaliation.