Canada-U.S. tension over Iraq 'short-term strain': Cellucci

MIKE KING <a href=www.canada.com>The Gazette; CP contributed to this report Thursday, April 03, 2003

Softer approach Ambassador tells Montreal audience our relationship 'remains very strong'

What Canada lacks in official support for the U.S.-led war in Iraq it makes up for in supplying its southern neighbour with resource-based energy, U.S. ambassador Paul Cellucci suggested yesterday.

"We already get more energy - oil, natural gas and electricity - (from Canada) than anywhere else," Cellucci told about 250 members of the Association de l'industrie électrique du Québec in a brief lunch-hour speech in downtown Montreal.

He compared Canada's contribution to such "unreliable sources" as the Middle East and Venezuela.

The ambassador emphasized the long-standing partnership between the United States and Canada, "our most important relationship in the world."

And while Cellucci said the long-term relationship he recalls from his stint as governor of Massachusetts "remains very strong," he acknowledged during a news conference after his talk that "there may be some short-term strain relative to the war in Iraq."

But referring to the energy factor as an example, Cellucci said "there are just too many things that benefit the peoples of both countries that we need to continue to work on together."

It was a softer approach than he had March 25 with an audience in Toronto, where he expressed how much U.S. President George W. Bush's administration was "disappointed" and "upset" with Ottawa's unwillingness to support the war in Iraq.

"I had a message to deliver last week and I did it," Cellucci said of the harsh criticism of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and the federal government.

"There is still a lot of support here in Canada ... a deep reservoir of goodwill between these two countries," he noted - some of it indirect.

"It is ironic that because of the ships in the Persian Gulf and the naval vessels and the military personnel assigned to U.S. and British units, the Canadian military is providing more help to the war in Iraq indirectly than the vast majority of the 49 countries who are part of the coalition supporting the war in Iraq," Cellucci said. "We're grateful for that support."

He finds that "an odd situation when two countries who are as close as we are, that we would be fighting a war, losing men and having prisoners of war taken, not to have Canada with us."

In the meantime, Cellucci stressed "the need to make sure our border remains open to business and closed to terrorists."

After his speech, Cellucci said anti-U.S. incidents in Canada sparked by the war are "unfortunate" but isolated, though he cautioned that the incidents might not go over well south of the border.

"Unfortunately, it's the kind of thing that gets reported back in the United States and kind of gives a somewhat false image."

Cellucci is scheduled to address the Institute for Research on Public Policy, a Montreal think tank, at a breakfast meeting this morning and further discuss the state of Canadian-U.S. relations.