Thank you.
We're certainly hoping, Mr. Ambassador, that you'd be willing to come back sometime. With one hour and being kind of rushed with some of the other presenters we've had just prior to you, our time is pretty well up.
I do want to give you a little bit of an indication as to one of the questions we may be interested in when you do come back. I know you made some remarks just recently in Montreal at the Millennium Summit. You stated this:
Let’s also not forget that we started this process from the ground up, at point zero, with twenty-five years of lost opportunities behind us. And to expect that this gigantic job of putting a failed state back on its feet can be accomplished within a few short years flies in the face of reality.
That is very similar to what you said today.
I think probably one of the questions that the committee would be wondering about, and that maybe you spoke on a little bit today, is at what point can Canadians expect that Afghanistan will be able to sustain itself, perhaps without military intervention but continued developmental assistance? What timeline would you expect within which we could see a withdrawal of some of the massive international assistance we have?
But that's for another day.