Liberal leader Stéphane Dion said Thursday that Prime Minister Stephen Harper is obligated to release a report by MP Wajid Khan on his trip to the Middle East last year.

"He must release this report," Dion said in Ottawa after he announced the names of his shadow cabinet.

"Is there a report? Is there a written report? I want to hear the prime minister say he's received a written report and will make it public."

Khan, appointed as special adviser to the prime minister on the Middle East while he was still a Liberal MP, spent $13,000 on a trip last September to Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. His report has yet to be released.

Dion said when Khan was a Liberal, he promised to make the report public and said he was working on it for the sake of Parliament.

Khan, MP for the riding of Mississauga-Streetsville, crossed the floor to the Conservatives earlier this month. Opposition parties have hounded Harper about the report since then, saying it should be made public.

According to a report in the Globe and Mail on Thursday, during Khan's trip, he expressed support for an Arab plan under which Israel would return to its pre-1967 borders. That position is stronger than any taken by Harper.

Khan reportedly backed the plan in an interview he gave last fall to Al-Hayat al-Jadida, a daily newspaper in Ramallah, West Bank.

During the election campaign last year, Harper told Jewish leaders in Canada that it does not make sense for Israel to give back the land it occupied following the 1967 war.

Dion said Khan never made any mention that he favoured a return by Israel to pre-1967 borders.

On his trip, Khan met with government officials, members of non-governmental organizations and Canadian diplomats working in the region, Harper's office confirmed Wednesday.

The office would not disclose the names of people with whom Khan met, although some of the names of his contacts already have been published in the media.

The controversy surrounding Khan has attracted the attention of the Muslim Canadian Congress, which expressed concern on Wednesday about what it called "thinly veiled bigotry" in attacks on Khan by two Arab Canadians.

Salma Siddiqui, the senior vice-president for the congress, said in a news release that Khan is perfectly qualified to speak on the Middle East.

Prominent Arab Canadians question Khan's qualifications

Two prominent Arab Canadians, Mohamed Elmasry and Khalid Mouammar, were quoted in a report by the Globe and Mail on Tuesday as saying Khan was not qualified to speak on the Middle East.

Elmasry is the national president of the Canadian Islamic Congress, while Mouammar is the president of the Canadian Arab Federation.

Elmasry was quoted by the Globe as saying: "Wajid Khan is not a professor of political science … and his knowledge of the Middle East is very limited. He's a member of Parliament and he so happens to be a Muslim, and he does not represent the Muslim viewpoint."

Siddiqui said the comments reported in the newspaper are offensive.

"To suggest that Wajid Khan's Pakistani ancestry disqualifies him from representing the Canadian government in the Middle East demonstrates the hidden Islamist agenda, which seeks to demean and trivialize non-Islamist Muslims as not authentic Muslims," she said.

Siddiqui said attacks on Khan by Islamist groups are "disingenuous" because a few former MPs, including NDP Svend Robinson and Liberal Carolyn Parrish, visited the Middle East, but she said Islamists did not question their competence or understanding of the region.

"It makes one wonder if the Islamists are uncomfortable with the fact that Wajid Khan is a not an Islamist Muslim and is less likely to be manipulated than other MPs who have been taken to the area by lobbyists," she said.

With files from the Canadian Press