Canada PM links September 11 to 'arrogance and selfishness'

OTTAWA: Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, going where few other leaders dare to tread, has linked the September 11 suicide attacks to the perceived arrogance and selfishness of the United States and the West.


Chretien is the first head of a western major nation to suggest that the suicide hijackers might have been motivated by what he describes as the misguided policies of a rich and powerful West that did not understand the need for restraint.

The veteran prime minister, who has been in power for nine years, told the CBC in an interview aired yesterday that there was "a lot of resentment" about the way in which powerful nations treated the increasing number of poor and dispossessed people in the world.

"You know, you cannot exercise your powers to the point of humiliation for others. That is what the Western world - not only the Americans, the Western world - has to realise. Because they (the have-nots) are human beings too. There are long-term consequences if you don't look hard at the reality in 10 or 20 (or) 30 years from now," he said.

Chretien continued: "And I do think the Western world is getting too rich in relation to the poor world and necessarily, you know, we're looked upon as being arrogant, self-satisfied greedy and with no limits. And September 11 is an occasion for me to realise it even more."

A total of 3,025 people - including 23 Canadians - died in the September 11 attacks. The official count does not include the hijackers.

Chretien comes from the moderate left of Canada's ruling Liberal Party, which has sometimes looked upon US Republican administrations with suspicion.

Canadian Transport Minister David Collenette went further in an interview with the CBC that was shown in the same September 11 package as the prime minister's. He likened some leading players in the United States to bullies on an ice hockey rink.

Chretien's relations with US President George W Bush have always been cool and this criticism of Washington's increasingly unilateral foreign policy is unlikely to win him fresh friends in the White House.

Chretien's office yesterday denied media reports he felt Washington was responsible for the attacks, saying the prime minister was instead focusing on the increasing divide between rich and poor "which has been clearly used by fanatics to fan resentment toward the developed world."