Canada will continue to transfer to Afghan authorities the suspected Taliban prisoners it captures, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Tuesday, a day after newspaper reports that such prisoners were abused led to calls for the firing of the country's defense minister.
"We have an arrangement," Harper said, referring to the country's 2005 deal with Afghanistan to hand over the prisoners.
He added that the allegations in Monday's edition of the Globe and Mail newspaper should not be accepted at face value.
The newspaper reported that 30 detainees said they had been choked, starved and given electric shocks -- further fueling criticism that Ottawa's deal with Kabul for the handover of such prisoners is flawed because it gave Canada no right to check on the condition of the prisoners it detained.
Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day said on Tuesday that Canada will urge the Afghan government to ensure human rights are respected, including in its prisons. Such rights, particularly for prisoners, are "so to speak, a new concept" in that country, he said.
"It's not going as quickly as we would like, but we see some progress," he said.
In a bid to tackle concerns about its previous agreement, the Canadian military signed another deal with a quasi-governmental Afghan rights group requiring it to notify Canada if the prisoners had been abused.
Harper on Monday had vowed his government would look into the allegations.
Canadian forces were not implicated in the abuse allegations and most of the captives interviewed by the Globe and Mail praised the Canadian soldiers for their politeness, their handling of the detainees and their comfortable detention facility.
But opposition parties, which have been increasingly pushing for a withdrawal of Canadian forces from Afghanistan, on Monday called for Defense Minister Gordon O'Connor to resign over the scandal. Harper said he had full confidence in O'Connor.
Meanwhile in Ottawa, Parliament narrowly defeated a motion calling for the country to pull its 2,500 troops out of the NATO alliance fighting in Afghanistan by 2009.
The motion, which would have been nonbinding, was brought forward on Tuesday by Liberal opposition lawmakers who have been pushing for a troop withdrawal as the Canadian death toll has steadily mounted. Fifty-four Canadian soldiers and one diplomat have been killed thus far in Afghanistan.
The motion was aimed at guaranteeing the combat mission wouldn't be extended beyond the current commitment, which is scheduled to end in February 2009.
Harper's Conservative government opposed it because the administration refuses to be tied to a firm exit date. The motion was defeated 150-134.
The Conservatives were joined in defeating the motion by the New Democrats, who want Canadian soldiers to immediately cease combat duty in the increasingly violent Kandahar Province.
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