Defence Minister Peter MacKay thinks NATO will come through with an additional 1,000 troops to bolster beleaguered Canadian forces in Afghanistan's Kandahar province.
"Those 1,000 extra troops -- that is really a minimum," MacKay told a conference Sunday in Brussels.
He would prefer the troops come from a single nation, and expects the pledge to be made either before or during a NATO summit that starts April 2 in Bucharest, Romania.
Arif Lalani, Canada's ambassador to Afghanistan, told CTV's Question Period on Sunday that he was also confident that NATO would come through for Canada.
As to who would supply them, "I think those discussions are ongoing," he said.
Parliament passed a motion on Thursday extending the Afghan mission to December 2011, but made it contingent on receiving more troops and some additional equipment from its NATO allies.
Canada wants some unmanned aerial drones and medium-lift helicopters.
Lalani said Canadian military and civilian personnel in Afghanistan saw the motion as a vote of confidence in their work.
The motion sets an end date for Canada, which Lalani said sets out a "clear Canadian position all of our allies and the Afghan government."
The motion also called for Canada's role to evolve, with more emphasis on training Afghan soldiers and reconstruction efforts.
A long mission
Some military experts think the Kandahar mission needs another 10,000 troops, let alone 1,000.
"More troops would be better," Lalani said. "We're also getting more troops, in a sense, because we're training the Afghan army."
Lalani claimed that more ground is being held in Kandahar and that development work is proceeding.
He couldn't give an estimate of when Afghans would be ready to take care of their own security and governance, only saying, "The time is shorter and shorter with each day."
Over the next year, there will be more tangible evidence of "Afghanization," he said.
MacKay told the German Marshall Fund of the United States conference, which debates trans-Atlantic security issues, that one shouldn't be too quick to talk about a NATO exit strategy from the Afghan mission.
"This type of insurgency is a long and abiding challenge. This is going to take a consistent, long-term effort," MacKay said.
Canadian forces are operating in one of the most violent parts of Afghanistan. Eighty Canadian soldiers have died since 2002, along with one diplomat and a civilian aid worker.
At the conference, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told the audience that the alliance's strategic thinking should also encompass climate change and energy security.
"Climate change will put many of our key resources like food, water and land under considerable stress. The global competition for energy and natural resources will redefine the relationship between security and economics," he said.
"Our growing reliance on information technology will make our societies more vulnerable to electronic warfare," de Hoop Scheffer said.
"At the same time, collective defence, NATO's core function, will and must remain a precious commodity."
With files from The Associated Press
