MERKEL IN OTTAWA TO BRIEF PM ON UKRAINE
Summit planned for Wednesday in attempt for peace
Angela Merkel travels to Ottawa Monday night for a brief meeting with Prime Minister Stephen Harper, as the German Chancellor continues her transatlantic shuttle diplomacy on the Ukraine crisis.
The German leader will travel to Ottawa from Washington, where she has a previously scheduled meeting with President Barack Obama, amid reports of a rift between the U.S. and Europe over whether to arm Ukraine’s military.
Ms. Merkel’s supper hour arrival in Ottawa for talks with Mr. Harper afterward will allow the prime minister to receive a private briefing from a trusted ally leading a push to end the continued fighting in eastern Ukraine. The two will then make a joint statement on Parliament Hill.
Ukraine’s military has been battling Russian-backed separatists since April in a conflict that the United Nations says has killed 5,300, a figure that has spiked in recent weeks.
Ms . Merkel, French President François Hollande, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko spoke by telephone Sunday and are attempting to hold a summit this Wednesday in the Belarus capital of Minsk.
Ms. Merkel travelled to Moscow on Friday to meet with Mr. Putin, amid reports that the U.S. is considering arming Ukraine forces, which France and Germany oppose.
Ms. Merkel wanted to talk to Mr. Harper face to face, just not with the bells and whistles of a regular visit, a senior government source explained.
“She’s in Washington, she’s close, she wants to be able to come and it not to be a big imposition on time,” said the source. “They’ve asked for the meeting.”
Mr. Harper has taken a harder line toward Mr. Putin than his fellow G7 leaders, and a senior government source says that’s not likely to change. Ms. Merkel is expected to begin her return trip to Europe before the evening is out.
“He will be very interested in hearing her take on those discussions,” said the source. “I don’t anticipate any phone calls between the prime minister and Mr. Putin any time soon.”
While it appears Canada won’t be playing any direct role in this latest round of talks between Putin and the West, the Harper government will continue to “work in concert with our allies as we always have,” said the source.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s top diplomat in Ottawa said Canada “can do more” to help his country. In an interview with the Ottawa Citizen, Ukrainian chargé d’affaires Shevchenko Marko thanked Canada for its assistance after Russia annexed Crimea and began providing military support to separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine’s Donbass region last year.
Canada’s contributions include $400-million in loans to help Ukraine’s battered economy, tens of millions of dollars more in humanitarian and development aid, nightvision goggles, bulletproof vests, tactical radios and 30,000 winter uniforms that were used by the Canadian Forces in the 1990s. But when asked if Canada had done enough, Mr. Marko said: “Canada can do more, and we will appreciate anything more, any kind of assistance.”
Defence Minister Rob Nicholson told reporters last week that the Conservative government had been “very clear up to this point that the equipment we send is non-lethal; it’s humanitarian supplies.” But he refused to entirely rule out providing lethal aid.
“We need defensive weapons, such as anti-tank and anti-aircraft,” Mr. Marko said. “If it is decided that such systems will be deployed in Ukraine, we will be grateful. If not, then OK. In any case, we have no other choice: We will fight with or without foreign assistance.”
The diplomat acknowledged concerns that sending weapons to Ukraine could prompt Russia to step up its involvement in the conflict, or that it could see the fighting spread to other parts of eastern Europe. But he said Russia started the provocative action, and the West has to show it has backbone.
Comments from a private meeting of American officials and politicians, meanwhile, laid bare the contempt of the U.S. for Europe’s attempts to broker peace.
Members of an American delegation described the German chancellor as “defeatist.” Senator John McCain, according to the Bild newspaper, compared the Franco-German efforts to find peace to Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler in the run-up to the Second World War.
“History shows us that dictators will always take more if you let them,” Mr. McCain reportedly said.
After the comments from the American delegation leaked, John Kerry, the U.S. secretary of state, tried to play down the rift. “Let me assure everybody there is no division, there is no split,” Mr. Kerry said in a speech to the Munich Security Conference. “We are united, we are working closely together, we all agree that this challenge will not end through military force.”