The first comment I would make is that we shouldn't be looking too much into the rear-view mirror when it comes to Afghanistan, because with the change of administration in Washington there is a desire to turn the page and move forward with a new policy. That creates a window of opportunity.
Second, the idea of an eminent persons group that would include people of the stature of Brahimi is really to do, at an informal level regionally and internationally, what we did in Canada with the Manley panel, which was a domestic exercise; it wasn't an international exercise. To pay for and support the creation of a group that can, on an ongoing basis, feed ideas into a diplomatic initiative that is going to be led by the United States, and that has just started...we want to make sure it gets off on the right foot and that it stays moving in the right direction.
Mr. Holbrook cannot talk to everyone in the region. His mandate is actually Afghanistan and Pakistan. He probably will talk informally to others in the region, but he's not going to be able to do it all alone. The fact is we are one of the key countries that have troops on the ground. We need to be part of that process. The challenge is to become part of that process in a way that is constructive, that will be accepted by the Americans.
One of the other things you could do is to try to set up a contact group. There was that model in Bosnia, but this is a somewhat different situation because we're not talking about a peace process as yet. We're talking about getting a political dialogue going, making sure that the issues you have just identified are properly on the table, trying to get a handle on those issues and a dialogue around those issues, and also begin to form a consensus on how we collectively move forward.