The Leader-Post from Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada • 6

A 6 The Leader-Post Regina July 24, 1987 Printed and published 0 1964 Park St Regina. Saskatchewan toy The Leader-Post Ud Postal address Bo 2020. S4P 3G4 Second dass mail registration No 1109 James Strutters, Executive Vice-President, Ivor WiHtams. Editor; Richard Thompson. Business Mgr SAon.

President; Balmer. Vice-President Canada being forced into FAO politicking 1 Canadian farmers grow $160 groups working with aid, devel-tnillion worth of produce every opment, refugees and related year which ends up being do- Fields, hated to the hungry of the They also feel that FAO does World. But does some of it get not have clear objectives, does siphoned off to black markets, not control its own activities ef-and are the administrative fectively, and doesnt learn costs out of hand? from its own mistakes. These are among the ques- A lot of this, the diplomats be-tions the Department of Exter-. has to do with the leader-nal Affairs has been asking ship.

There are rumors of nepo-leading to a demand for a ma- tism and financial abuse, ior shake-up of the United Na- Overhead costs in some FAO some 40 to 50 Canada loses a soldiers soldier run at per Hence, Canada is spearheading a palace revolt. Saouma' spends $500,000 a year of FAO funds to travel around the world with a nine-person entourage; in response, Canada has given Mensah some travel support to meet some of the electorate representatives of the 157 countries who will vote in November by secret ballot for the next FAO leader. Maj. Gen. John Meredith Rockingham was given a Final salute with full military honors at his funeral yesterday in Victoria.

He was 75. Rocky was respected and renowned for his roles in two wars. He commanded the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry in Normandy. His headquarters took a pounding from' RAF rockets during the Typhoons ham, then a British Columbia utility executive, as The army wanted a veteran from civilian life who would bd on the same footing as the civiU ians being called to the colors; who had solid military credentials, and who could get along well with the U.S. military; Rockingham filled the bill exactly.

He commanded until April 1952, during the Imjin River crossings and in such opt erations as Commando, Pepperpot and Toughy. Rockingham was the sort of soldier who helped give the Canadian army its reputation for toughness and can-do ability. A soldiers soldier. mands in July 1944, Rockingham was promoted to brigadier and given command of the 9th Canadian Infantry (Highland) Brigade, which he led through France, the Low Countries and into Germany. He also was flagged to command a brigade against Japan.

Canada was slow to organize troops for the Korean conflict. It was more than six weeks after Korea invaded the south on June 25, 1950, before Ottawa authorized the 25th Brigade as part of the United Nations Forces Commonwealth Division. The army then reached outside of its regular commanders to select Rocking tions Food and Agriculture Organization. The driving force (some would say the autocrat) behind the FAO is Edouard Saouma, a Lebanese whose second four-year term as director-general ends this fall. Canada is working quietly to ensure he doesnt get another term.

Very diplomatically, External Affairs people say they think its time for a change, and therefore they now support Moise Mensah of Benin for the job. Mensah, a career international civil servant, is assistant president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development. He has the solid support of the African states, who are major recipients of FAO aid, which implies that, right now, even those on the receiving end of FAO help are unhappy with the way things are run. The dispute is reminiscent of criticisms of Amadou MBows style as director-general of UNESCO, a row which led to the U.S. and Britain boycotting Hay.

Guay Its going to as the incumbent powerful France. But to lobby hard, general principles to protect vestment. be a tight race, defence of Verrieres against a has some German A red supporters, notably smoke artillery shell intended Canada has reason to indicate Panzer targets, fell not only on the short, bringing down a number of justice, of rocket strikes against Rock-but its enormous in- inghams position, In a shakeup of high com Mulroneyjiot reaping rewards of farm policy There has been more talking, more committees between Ottawa and the provinces. Skogstad does not give the government much credit on this score, stating that agricultural policy has always entailed considerable intergovernmental collaboration and been fairly harmonious. Although basically correct, the statement could be challenged in some of its parts, as witness the failure of Ottawa and Quebec to come to any kind of agreement on crop insurance prior Jo the advent of the present governments.

In nearly every one of its statutory obligations, the government has had to spend more than was intended. It did so for crop insurance and for the stabilization plan. And it had to make good on a $201-million deficit by the Canadian Wheat Board because initial prices on some grades proved to be higher than market value. It is now being forced to lend funds to the Western Grain Stabilization Fund, depleted because conditions demanded high payments. The loan is one a future government will probably have to absorb, a condition which the prairie provincial governments may well demand in return for their direct involvement, sought by Ottawa.

The government also came through with the billion-dollar special grains program. This may well have to be repeated this year, although not necessarily in the same form. In some respects, the present government has been no different than the previous one. Theres been a lot of noise about a national agriculture policy, a particular fancy of Premier Grant Devines. This was to be the apex of federal-provincial co-operation.

So far, its been all talk and no money. Skogstad is even less charitable in that the alleged policy is not only all talk, but much of it is double talk. Eugene Whelan didnt have much cabinet support in promoting his agrifood strategy from 1981 on. That provides a readier explanation for the fact he didnt get any more of the five-year expenditure envisioned than has the present fundless national strategy. The Tories have been wary of making changes which they saw as essential to good government when in oppo sition.

Thats the reason the Crow benefit is still being paid to the railways instead of grain producers. The government could yet face strong opposition if the free trade dis- cussions with the United States continue. As Skogstad views it, its a case where the vested and conflicting in-terests of producers in the different regions will surface and embitter intergovernmental and federal-client relations. On the broader scale, Skogstad figures Ottawas continuing insistence on the provinces paying part of the cost of all programs and helping draft policy will lead the provinces to press their own objectives on the national government. In the longer term, particularly if the economic outlook does not improve appreciably for significant numbers of farmers, provincial input could result in important shifts away from Conservative objectives of fiscal restraint and a market-oriented agricultural industry.

Agriculture is one area where the government has been responsive to various needs but, for Brian Mulroney, the political benefits have been few. that agency until it becomes more accountable. So what could go wrong? An External Affairs spokesman explains: There is need for reform, particularly in areas of priority and planning, accountability, transparency of decisions, and co-ordination of operational activities with other UN organizations. In plain terms, Canada one of the top half-dozen food donors in the world is unhappy with: Lack of input in how those donations are used; Inability to find out how those donations are used, and what happens to $40 million a year in cash grants; A confrontational attitude between FAO and other UN Guay is Ottawa correspondent for The Leader-Post and The Saskatoon Star-Phoenix. OTTAWA In devoting a chapter to the federal governments agricultural policy, Carleton Universitys school of public administrations eighth annual review, How Ottawa Spends, does not add to the font of knowledge of anyone who has followed events.

What Grace Skogstads chapter does accomplish is to offer a useful recapitulation of where the Conservative government intended to go had events not sidetracked it, at least in part. As the estimates themselves show, the government wanted to spend less on agriculture and to charge more for users of its services, whether as producers or processors. And it wanted more direct provincial government involvement, particularly in tripartite programs. Normal expenditures have been reduced and so has research spending. More dollars have found their way into federal coffers through user fees, but not nearly as much as was The way to defeat mindless terror avoid retaliation But most minorities are not so downtrodden as all that.

Certainly the Basques and the Sikhs are not, and even the Tamils of Sri Lanka are a doubtful case. So how do you, the activist, get your people to risk their property and even their lives for the goal you have chosen? Quite simply, by making it even more dangerous not to support you. This can be achieved in part by terrorizing the influential leaders among your own community. For example, yet another moderate Sikh politician, Satnam Singh Bajwa, and five members of his household were machine- support of the terrorists aims. Because, if you belong to some minority group, and you are convinced that your people should have political independence, you face a steep uphill struggle.

The activist js probably a political or religious fanatic whose life revolves around abstract ideals and political intrigues. But most ordinary people dont really much care which government collects taxes from them, provided it lets them get on with raising their children and earning their living. If your minority group is truly oppressed, then enlisting them in your struggle presents no great difficulty. India back to the Punjab. The few hundred active Sikh terror; ists have not yet achieved their ultimate goal of a mass Sikh uprising mainly because the Indian government has worked hard to contain the blind anger of the Hindu masses.

The Sfl Lankan government has been less sues cessful in preventing counter-massq cres by the Sinhalese majority over the years, so it now has a full-scale Tamil rebellion on its hands. 2 By contrast, the present SpanisE government has never engaged in pressive actions towards the BasquE population in general, and the Spanish people have not allowed themselves tj be incited into random reprisal against individual Basques. As a r' suit, the Basque terrorist movemenC ETA, after a dozen years and manjl hundreds of deaths, may finally bE running out of steam. Popular revulsion after the Barcelona supermarket bombing was so ir tense, even among Basques, that ET subsequently apologized for it. AnS that is the real lesson: that the apprcG priate response to these ghastly acts slaughter is to resist the reflexive de; sire to retaliate which is precisely what the terrorists want and to act" with almost superhuman restraint.

At worst, the problem can be coni tained that: way. At best, it can somcK timps pven bp pndpdd By Gwynne Dyer Dyer, a Canadian freelance journalist and lecturer on international politics and military subjects, is based in London. LONDON There is a vicious political strategy which is so often used by ethnic and religious minorities nowadays, and seems so mindless, that we should remind ourselves periodically just what its purpose actually is. On June 11, Tamil terrorists in Sri Lanka set off an explosion that killed 35 bus passengers. On June 19, 18 Spanish civilians were killed by a Basque terrorist bomb in a Barcelona supermarket.

On July 6 and 7, 72 helpless Hindus were machine-gunned to death by Sikh terrorists who stopped three buses on northern Indian roads. On July 8, six Sikhs were slain by furious Hindu mobs seeking revenge, which led various naive people to issue condemnations of the bus massacres as not only vicious but counter-productive: the Sikh terrorists were just getting more of their own people killed. But the Khalistan Commando Force would have been even happier if a thousand of their people had been slaughtered in Hindu reprisals. of these seemingly senseless massacres is to trigger the murder of yet more people, this time from the terrorists own community, in order to mobilize that rmmunilv in gunned to death in Amritsar on July 10. But picking off moderate political leaders does not induce enough fear among the masses whose support is vi-.

tal for a successful independence struggle. So you try to get the central government or the majority community to create that fear for you. If you can drive the central government into acting in extremely repressive ways or, better yet, if you can get the majority to engage in massacres against your minority then you begin to succeed. Your own people will start to feel that they have nowhere left to turn for protection except to your organization, and no hope of permanent security except independence. To kill innocent people, including is most un-Sikh-like," said Jeet Malhotra, a prominent Sikh architect, after the bus massacres in India.

In the name of religion, these terrorists have been trying to put our name in the mud. On the contrary, they have been trying to get Hindus to massacre Sikhs in large numbers. They have not yet succeeded: six dead Sikhs is not enough. But meanwhile, Sikh terrorism and the Hindu reprisals it stimulates serve the tremists purposes by driving the two further apart. There is a steady outflow of Hindus from dominated Punjab, and a steady flow 5 ofty'iph toned Sikhs from other areas 7T iii mi i r4j IV 7 -a 1 Troops are helpless as Sikh shp burns July fl,.