Canadian PM visits troops in Afghanistan

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, May 31 (UPI) -- Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper returned home Tuesday after paying a surprise 11-hour visit to Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan.

The prime minister took a helicopter tour of the Panjawi district, where Canadian troops, as part of the NATO mission, have built roads, replaced heroin-producing poppy farms with wheat fields and rousted most insurgents, Postmedia News reported.

Harper made several speeches to groups of about 500 soldiers and noted Canadians had served longer in Afghanistan than in World Wars I and II combined.

"Islamist terror … no longer represents a geo-strategic threat to the world -- it is no longer a source of global terrorism," Harper told the troops.

Canada has participated in the NATO anti-insurgent mission since it began in 2001 and is nearing the end of its second combat role in July. The U.S. Army will assume the combat mission and Canada's role will change to one of teaching policing and security to Afghans until the summer of 2014.

There will be some 950 military and Royal Canadian Mounted Police members in the security detail and about 100 of them are already in place, the report said.