The Prime Minister's Office got a little ahead of itself this morning and almost triggered another diplomatic incident over Afghanistan.

This time it was PMO communications staff who told reporters travelling with the Prime Minister that after a bilateral meeting last night with Italy's Silvio Berlusconi, Berlusconi had decided to lift the "caveats" that currently apply to Italian troops serving with NATO in Afghanistan.

"Caveats" refers to the conditions that stipulate that some NATO countries will not participate in missions that expose their soldiers to combat. Canadian troops in Afghanistan have no caveats and Canada, along with such countries as the United States and Great Britain, have argued that no country should be allowed caveats.

The problem with the story was that it wasn't true. Berlusconi said only that he would "rethink" the caveats for Italy, not that he had decided to lift them.

Matters were made worse by the fact that reporters had sent the false information to their editors in Canada for broadcast and publication just before the Prime Minister's plane took off from Rome to London.

PMO communications staff apologized for the mistake and then allowed a parade of reporters up to the private compartment at the front of the plane to use the only phone on board that still works while in flight. The Berlusconi story was killed but in its place went the story of the diplomatic near miss.

Earlier this spring the now former Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier created a diplomatic incident when he mused publicly about the need to replace the Governor of Kandahar. Bernier had to quickly and publicly retract within hours.