Good morning, committee.
This is meeting 54 of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, on Tuesday, May 8, 2007. I just want to let our committee know that at 11 o'clock there is another committee coming in here, so we want to be as prompt as possible.
In our first hour we're going to continue with our briefings from Afghanistan.
Our witnesses this morning are from the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. We have Seema Patel, lead project consultant on the post-conflict reconstruction project; and Steven Ross, a research consultant on the post-conflict reconstruction project.
In our second hour we're going to go into our draft report on democratic development. We also want to save a few moments at the end of the second hour for some committee business.
Welcome to our guests today. We're looking forward to hearing from you. We had a little chance to chat just before the committee started. As you know, this is a fairly regular review of what's happening in Afghanistan, from many different perspectives. We certainly look forward to what you have for us today. As I mentioned to you, we look forward to your opening comments and then we will go into the first round of questioning. We will conclude this at about two minutes to ten o'clock.
So welcome, and the time is yours.