Canada is confident NATO allies will come forward soon to supply the extra troops it has demanded as a condition for keeping its 2,500 soldiers in Afghanistan, REUTERS quoted Defence Minister Peter Mackay as saying on Sunday. Mackay said there had been high-level contacts among NATO allies, including between Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and that a decision could be made before or during an April 2-4 NATO summit in Bucharest. "We feel 1,000 troops (as a reinforcement) is a minimum...I am confident we will have that," he told a security and foreign policy conference in Brussels. Canadian troops are based in the southern province of Kandahar and have seen some of the highest casualties as NATO's 43,000-strong International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) battles against a Taliban-led insurgency. France said last month it was considering an offer of support to the Canadians but since then alliance sources say Paris is also mulling a re-deployment of forces currently based in the capital Kabul to east Afghanistan by the Pakistan border. U.S. officials told Reuters last week they wanted France to put its troops directly in the south, but would agree to a deployment in the east that could subsequently allow U.S. troops to shift to the south and meet Canada's request. Such a rotation would be part of a wider effort to reinforce ISAF, with Britain mulling an extra 600 troops in neighbouring Helmand province and Poland ready to take on more responsibility in the east and add some 500 troops, alliances sources said. Canada's mission in Afghanistan is currently due to end in February 2009, but the government has agreed to remain until 2011 if another NATO country agrees to supply the added troops Ottawa says are needed for the mission to succeed. Eighty Canadian soldiers have died in Afghanistan and polls show the public is split on the mission. Mackay said he believed Canadians were coming round to the view that the Afghan mission was winnable and worthwhile, but played down any prospect of a fast exit of NATO troops or withdrawal of the international presence in Afghanistan. "Exit strategies are useful for domestic political consumption but this is going to take a consistent long-term international effort," he told reporters at the event hosted by the German Marshall Fund thinktank.
