Canadian Foreign Minister Maxime Bernier said Monday he is optimistic that NATO will send more troops to Afghanistan where Canada is seeking for extending its mission.
He said he hoped the commitment will be made at the meeting of NATO allies in Bucharest this week, but also maybe at a later time.
Canada's House of Commons recently voted to extend the military mission in Afghanistan to 2011, as long as NATO provide 1,000 more troops to the war-torn country and the Defense Department came up with battlefield helicopters and unmanned surveillance planes.
"I hope we will have our troops -- maybe at this meeting or maybe later," he told Canadian Television at an interview Monday.
"If we don't succeed (in getting) these 1,000 troops in the south, in Kandahar, it will be a failure for us, it will be a failure for the NATO mission because we cannot succeed in Afghanistan if we don't succeed in the south," he said.
Bernier's remarks follows on the heels of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's statement last week that he is not positive that all of Canada's demands will be met at the NATO meeting in Romania, which is set to begin on April 2.
"I don't think we will necessarily finish that process at Bucharest but we will finish it in the very near future," Harper said.
Source:Xinhua
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