Was Baird tricked into this meeting?
Photo circulates of minister with Syrian official
Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird met with a Syrian government representative in Montreal in March despite Canada’s policy of distancing itself diplomatically from Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime, Postmedia News has learned.
Photographs of the meeting between Baird and Syrian Honorary Consul Nelly Kanou have been circulating online, stoking concerns within the Syrian-Canadian community that the federal Conservative government is softening its position on Assad. Baird’s office says such fears are unfounded and that the government remains unwavering in its condemnation of the Syrian regime as fighting rages inside the Middle Eastern country.
Exactly how the meeting came about remains unclear. Baird’s office says the minister was essentially tricked into meeting Kanou while an organizer rejects that.
“It is unfortunate that this meeting was presented to the minister’s office as something other than what was intended,” Baird spokesman Adam Hodge said in an email.
But Baird “knew exactly who he was meeting with,” said Arab-Canadian writer Ahmad (Eed) Murad, who set up the March 18 meeting. “I did not speak Chinese with him, I spoke English like I am speaking to you.”
Baird announced in May 2012 that Canada was expelling all Syrian diplomats in Ottawa amid scathing criticism of the Assad government and its violent campaign to quash what had initially started as a peaceful call for political change in the country. Canada closed its own embassy in Damascus two months earlier, citing security concerns.
Left untouched, however, were two Syrian honorary consulates, one in Montreal and Vancouver. Honorary consulates are accorded many of the same privileges and serve many of the same roles as other diplomatic missions, including processing visas and promoting trade and cultural relations.
Syrian-Canadians are torn over the fact the two honorary consulates have been allowed to continue quietly working even as the death toll in Syria continues to mount. While they say it would otherwise be extremely difficult to obtain Syrian travel documents such as visas and passports, there are concerns about the Assad government having an official representative of any sort operating in Canada.
“At the beginning of the Syrian revolution, they used to organize all these (pro-Assad) rallies,” said Afra Jalabi, a Montreal-based member of the opposition Syrian National Council. “When you take the side of a government that is systematically killing and torturing, you become an offensive figure in the community.”
Baird’s office confirms the minister and Murad, who has spent decades writing for Arab-language newspapers and other publications in Canada, talked of a possible meeting to discuss the situation in Syria when the two ran into each other at an event in Ottawa on March 15.
That meeting was arranged to take place at a federal government office in Montreal on March 18, when Baird would be in the city for other discussions and planned to announce a fresh round of sanctions against Russian officials.
Hodge, Baird’s spokesman, said Murad revealed Kanou’s involvement only moments before the meeting. Even then, Hodge said the minister didn’t realize who he was talking to until Kanou “mentioned that she was the honorary consul of the Assad regime and presented a second business card to that effect.”
“Upon discovering Ms. Kanou’s role, the minister delivered a very strong message to the two guests about the Assad regime’s outrageous attacks against its own people, just as he has firmly and repeatedly expressed Canada’s condemnation of these actions in public,” Hodge said.
Kanou did not return repeated phone calls this week.
Murad, however, said he was clear with the minister about Kanou’s attendance from the beginning. While Murad said he is no fan of Assad, he said he had hoped the meeting would help inform Canada’s policy on Syria given that the government had closed the Canadian Embassy there.