National Defence committee  In fact, I think the Government of Canada did. It absolutely wasn't something I was going to go off and sign myself, I assure you. We were all in agreement that this was the right move. This was Afghanistan—this was the Afghans' country—and certainly we were in full support, from Foreign Affairs and the Department of National Defence, that this was the right thing to do.

National Defence committee  We do that first of all by supporting the Afghans, because we are in their country; it's their political process. They've built the political process based on the constitution they developed and they're working through it. As the President works through the Governor of Kandahar, with the Government of Kandahar province specifically, they help define those who are coming into the political process and those, like the Taliban, whatever tribe they may come from or whatever region they come from, who don't want to go on the political process and want to use violence.

National Defence committee  That's all fine, and that's why the elected government of Afghanistan, with their leaders, walk through that...and we support the security process and the reconstruction part, but they walk through those complex relationships with us supporting them, as opposed to our walking through them.

National Defence committee  I should take that on. I don't know the individual personally; I don't know what contract we have with him right now, and I certainly don't know what his present activities are. That's a level of detail that gets run through a new country. I would say, in support of what the minister just said, we're dealing with a country that was destroyed and brutalized over 25 years.

National Defence committee  Everybody in that country was involved in the violence at one point and everybody is described from one angle, agenda, or perception or another as something else: either as a warlord or as a good guy or a bad guy, etc. So some of those descriptions are in the past, and many of the people who were engaged and called warlords in the past have come into the political process.

National Defence committee  Actually, you're asking the price of the Excalibur round.

National Defence committee  Minister, perhaps I could just say first, negotiations or encouraging defection--I didn't say that anybody was negotiating with the Taliban. That would presume that you were talking with them about what they would accept and maybe that you would hand over southern Afghanistan to them, etc.