Too early to decide Afghan mission end date: Tories
Updated Mon. Feb. 11 2008 4:04 PM ET
CTV.ca News Staff
Despite tabling a motion last week calling for troops to stay in Afghanistan until 2011, the Conservative government isn't willing to call that a withdrawal date.
Government House Leader Peter Van Loan said the Tories don't want to tie the hands of future governments by specifying a hard-and-fast end to Canada's mission to Afghanistan.
Responding to a barrage of Liberal questions about whether the Conservatives are trying to set the scene for a never-ending war in Afghanistan, Van Loan said that deciding an end date was not the most important task at hand.
"You cannot have peace and security in that country until we advance the mission we have," he said, adding that includes continuing in a combat and training role until Afghans are able to handle the own security.
NDP Leader Jack Layton, meanwhile, wants Canada to withdraw its troops by February 2009, and the Liberals are meeting Monday night to work out the final details on their own motion on the mission.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has signalled it will be a confidence matter, meaning the government would fall and an election would be triggered if the opposition parties united to vote it down.
Liberal motion to be discussed Monday
It won't come to a vote until March, but there is expected to be lengthy debate over the motion in the House of Commons. Dion is expected to outline a set of amendments to the Conservative motion when he meets with his caucus tonight -- setting the course for those debates.
Liberals told CP the plan will address areas that they feel were ignored or largely forgotten by the Tory plan -- likely suggesting a greater focus on diplomacy, development and support, as opposed to combat.
Dion has maintained that the combat mission must end in February 2009 as scheduled, and he is expected to stick to this position.
Meanwhile, Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae said Monday that Canada's mission in Afghanistan must shift its focus to training and development, or face failure.
Rae, who hopes to win a seat as an MP in the riding of Toronto Centre, said Canada's military focus simply isn't working.
"We have to get real about how difficult this mission is and how it's not being shared in NATO," Rae told CTV's Canada AM.
More troops from France?
Rae's comments followed Defence Minister Peter MacKay's recent meetings with NATO defence ministers in Vilnius, Lithuania, where he was actively trying to solicit additional troops to help the Canadian Forces in the south of Afghanistan.
A recent report by a panel headed by John Manley said Canada should only stay past the February 2009 deadline if NATO sends 1,000 more troops to help in the region.
During the Lithuania meetings, France suggested it will send more troops to the south, but a report published in French newspaper Le Figaro on Monday suggested that sending troops to southern Afghanistan is only one of four options the French are considering.
The newspaper said French President Nicolas Sarkozy would decide "within a few days," but would not make any announcements until the NATO summit in Bucharest in early April, and that the president seems very committed to the Afghan mission.
After France first indicated its willingness to help last week, members of the prime minister's staff and the Department of National Defence travelled to Paris to meet with French officials as a follow-up to MacKay's discussions with French Defence Minister Herve Morin.
MacKay returned to Canada on Sunday from a corresponding meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and his other foreign counterparts in Vilnius, Lithuania.
While in Vilnius, Gates' offered a stern warning to members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, most of whom have not contributed any of their combined 3 million troops to the Afghanistan effort, that NATO could become a "two-tier" organization if more countries don't share the burden.
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