Thank you very much for those questions. I'll take them as they came.
In regard to the reports of a ceasefire agreement between the Pakistani authorities and Mr. Mehsud, of course we've heard these reports. We don't have any way of confirming those independently.
Our message to the Government of Pakistan is always a consistent one: that they ought to be taking appropriate actions to put a stop to the violence in their own country, particularly in the tribal and federally administrated areas, and they ought to be doing whatever they can to control the flow of Taliban across that very important border, which is, of course, of tremendous importance to Canada at this particular time.
We haven't changed our messages to the authorities in any way in that regard. We'll wait for them to explain whether they are pursuing a ceasefire, and what that might mean in terms of their own efforts to achieve those two objectives that we insist they work towards achieving.
On the numbers of Taliban in Pakistan, I don't have those, I'm afraid. I don't have access to those numbers. We are, of course, concerned. The bottom line is that there are Taliban in Pakistan, and there is tremendous movement across that border with Afghanistan for historical tribal reasons related to the movement of the Pashtun population, which is enormous, as you know, and that is a matter of great concern. I think numbers would be very, very difficult to ascertain.
On national reconciliation within Afghanistan, I'm not going to really comment on issues related to Afghanistan, but of course our focus is on supporting the jirga process, which involves getting people together for a dialogue. To the extent that they want to initiate that, our belief is that we should be supportive wherever that kind of activity is going on.
On the question from Mr. Chan about the legal sector, I agree with you. We were very encouraged to see the independence of the judiciary, the way it had been developing last year; and then, of course, we're very concerned, equally, by the crackdown that was imposed upon that judiciary. The minister was on record as expressing Canada's concern in that regard.
What you're referring to, the imagery of the protests of the lawyers, and then repeated crackdowns on them, including the one that you saw recently, is something that concerns us equally. It's certainly not an image that gives anyone very much comfort around the world in watching Pakistan and hoping for national reconciliation and democratic development there. This is not a good sign. So our call has always been for respect for the judiciary, and for that matter, respect for peaceful protest.