The Harper government has unveiled a new motion to end the Canadian mission in the volatile Kandahar region of Afghanistan by 2011 -bridging the gap between previous Conservative and Liberal motions.
The motion adopts wording from a Liberal amendment, though the Tories have the military leaving six months later than in the Liberal proposal.
It also says the mission will focus on training and reconstruction, as the Liberals have demanded.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper spoke about the motion at the Conference of Defence Associations in Ottawa Thursday morning.
"This motion confirms our commitment (in Afghanistan) is not open-ended," Harper said.
He said that the motion addressed many of the Liberals' concerns and should garner the majority needed to pass through the House of Commons.
If the Liberals accept the new wording and agree to support the motion, it will remove one of several possible triggers for a spring election.
Harper has said the vote on extending the Afghan mission, to be held next month, will be a matter of confidence.
Originally, the Tories called for the combat mission in the dangerous Kandahar region to be extended to the end of 2011, assuming NATO met their demands for additional troops and equipment. The motion did not rule out any further extensions of the mission.
Dion countered last week with a lengthy Liberal amendment calling for a new mission to begin next February, focused on reconstruction and the training of Afghan forces rather than hunting Taliban insurgents. The amendment also called for an end to the mission by February 2011 and for complete withdrawal of Canadian troops from Afghanistan by July 2011.
The Liberal amendment also required that NATO agrees to rotate the leadership of the combat role in Kandahar to another country. If that does not happen, the Liberals say, Canada should withdraw all of its troops next February.
