"Canada and our NATO allies have a fundamental national security interest in ensuring that Afghanistan cannot again become a haven or a source for global terrorists," MacKay said in a speech to some 200 foreign diplomats, academics and journalists.
"We will do our part in Afghanistan and we expect others to do their part," he said.
Later, MacKay clarified to reporters: "Clearly, I'm talking to NATO countries that are currently there, some of whom have restrictions placed on them by their own governments."
"Those forces we believe can be deployed to the south on the part of a number of countries that we're talking to," he said. "We'll continue to apply that reasonable plea for burden sharing in the south."
Some 2,300 Canadian troops are based in Afghanistan's most volatile Kandahar region hunting down former Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants.
These "stubborn insurgent forces" have stalled reconstruction efforts in the south, MacKay said.
And, gains made in Afghanistan are "not yet irreversible," warned a senior foreign affairs department official.
Development initiatives in Helmand, Kandahar, Zabul, Nimroz and Uruzgan provinces have slowed because they are "most unstable at the moment," an official said last week.
"These provinces are where insurgencies are most active. You will see national programs reach right across the country in some cases. But in others, security does not permit that," he said.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2006