 Thank you very much Mr. Chamberlain for your intellectual remarks. It's great to be back in Dublin and to speak before the audience and participants of the Institute of International and European Affairs. I was asked to to share with you my assessment of the situation on the ground in Afghanistan after more than 10 years of international intervention in this country, but also more importantly about the way forward. How do we see the way forward? As we moved towards the transition of 2014, the date which was agreed by between the Afghan government and international community, when security forces, when the control over or security forces and the country search will be taken by the Afghan government. Indeed, 10 years ago, if you remember in December 2001, at Petersburg in Germany, Afghanistan charted a new path towards a sovereign peaceful democratic future and the international community accepted responsibility to accompany Afghanistan in that journey. Never before have the Afghan people enjoyed comparable access to services, including education and health or seen greater development of infrastructure across the country after 10 years of international community presence here. Afghanistan's national and security institutions are increasingly able to assume responsibility for a secure and independent Afghanistan. You have power supplies in Kabul and you have 8.5 million children going to the school in comparison that during the Taliban years there were only 1.5 boys attending the school and the girls were at all not allowed to go to the school. Now we have 2.5 million girls attending the school and that's, I mean, and then in addition to that, if you take another example of the access to the basic health services, while in 2001 only 8% of Afghan population were able to make use of the basic health services. Now it's about 62% of the Afghans across the country signed to support of European Union and United States and other partners and allies. So there are considerable changes and improvements in comparison what happened, what was the case 11 years ago that is being acknowledged by the Afghans, especially civil society. We have free media, as robust as in Ireland, Lithuania or other parts of European Union and we have increasingly assertive parliament which still needs to to improve its capacity so as to play a proper check and balance in the architecture of the political system of Afghanistan. Despite these achievements which I mentioned to you, there is still a long way to go. Afghanistan has been exposed to ongoing conflict for over 30 years of war. It has one of the highest level of illiteracy, about 80% of the people are illiterate, and is subject to the influence of radicalism. In addition, it is surrounded by a set of neighbors with highly competitive national genders. All in all, it is indeed highly challenging, tough environment, as also being demonstrated by the violent attacks during the last couple of days, following totally irresponsible, just personally saying a stupid act of burning of the Holy Quran at the US basis in Bagram. I hope that the words of President Karzai and other leaders for self-restraint dialogue and calm will be heard and will not allow the enemies of peace to take the advantage of the very fragile situation in Afghanistan. Our common objective is to support Afghanistan in its transformation to a sovereign and self-reliant country with a government that respects human and universal rights and freedoms and that seeks to live in peace with itself and with its neighbors. Therefore, we consider it of particular importance to assist Afghan government in moving from a war economy, which is currently the case, largely dependent on donor support to a normal, self-generating and self-sustainable economy. However, after 10 years of what could be considered the largest scale of international engagement to date and following a firm commitment between the international community and Afghanistan made in the Bonn Conference last December, we need to put things into perspective. Let me elaborate on a number of points that are currently of priority on the Afghanistan agenda. First, it is a transition process whereby responsibility for security, as I mentioned, will be handed over from international to Afghan forces, is ongoing. We are currently in a trench, so-called two, of the process and planning for trench three is underway. NTIME, Native Training Mission and ISEP, anticipate that by 2013 most operations in Afghanistan will be Afghan National Security Forces led and that by December 2014 the transition process will have been completed. However, recent analysis by the World Bank, which was made on the eve of the Bonn International Conference, has made it clear that Afghanistan will need international help to fund its security sector post-2014, pending the development of Afghanistan's human and economic resources, including its rich mineral wealth. The Native Summit in Chicago this year in May will consider concrete arrangements for ongoing international support for the Afghan security forces. Overall, the security situation in Afghanistan, of course, remains challenging and we need to strike a realistic balance as concerns the transition process and what comes beyond, given that the stability of the region much depends on the ongoing peace and reconciliation process, as well as the capacity of the Afghan government itself that at present has only very limited human resources available. Sustainable peace in Afghanistan is contingent on the establishment of a system in which all Afghans believe they have a stake and that's still a long way to go, especially with a very underdeveloped subnational governance lack of justice sector reform across the country. On 21st of January and just last week President Karzai issued a statement in which he reiterated Afghan leadership of the peace process and brought Afghan support for talks. He called on the leadership of the Taliban to engage in direct talks with the Afghan government and on Pakistan to support and facilitate direct negotiation efforts as part of the peace process with the aim of a process leading to a political settlement compatible with the Afghan constitution. In response indeed for the first time on 24th February Pakistani Prime Minister Gilani appealed to the Taliban leadership as well as to all other Afghan groups including his Bislami to participate in an intra-Afghan process for national reconciliation and peace. This is the first time the Pakistani government has appealed directly to the Taliban to engage in peace talks with Afghan government. The Taliban has yet to respond specifically to the statement by Prime Minister Gilani. The stated Pakistani and Afghan government's preparedness to cooperate to advance the peace process and address common threats is indeed encouraging and hopeful. However the relationship between the Taliban and Pakistan is complex and there is no guarantee that the Taliban will reverse their resistance to direct talks with Kabul government. I think we all know by now that real stability in Afghanistan and the region can only be achieved with Pakistan on board. Afghanistan and the region have now embarked on the so-called Heart of Asia initiative which was launched by the Turkish diplomacy in Istanbul that is looking to foster closer cooperation and conviviality among the region. It is clear that there is a need for structured and honest discussion amongst regional neighbors about their security concerns leading to agreement on a security mechanism which respects the sovereignty of each and ensures the security of all collectively. If the international community and Afghanistan are to succeed in this common endeavor to give the Afghan people the security development and governance they need we will need to work as partners to deliver commitments made in Kabul so-called Kabul process. The upcoming conference in Tokyo which will take place in July of this year hosted by the government of Japan will provide an opportunity to refocus our collective efforts in the areas of governance and development. We need to be honest if the Afghan government in the prevailing economic context does not show tangible economic tangible action to demonstrate its sincerity of its intention to implement commitments deriving from the Kabul and Borne conferences and to improve the governance especially with respect to dealing with the corruption and putting in place subnational governance moving ahead with electoral reform and ensuring that the 2014 elections are free and free and are seen as free and free. They may encounter resistance and lack of support from our waters, parliament, parliaments and politicians for a sustained investment in this country beyond 2014 and that message we're conveying to our counterparts in Kabul and across the country. What is the role of European Union? The EU High Representative Vice President Cathy Ashton confirmed at Borne that the EU and its member states will commit to Afghanistan for the long haul. European Union foreign ministers agreed to retain the current level of development aid which is about 1 billion euros annually for coming years. Equally important, Cathy Ashton announced that we will start negotiations on cooperation and partnership agreement with Afghanistan which we hope to start in a couple of weeks and we also agreed to expand the European Union's police mission mandate until the end of 2013 which specifically focuses on the civilian police training and justice sector and until very recently as the Irish experts have been also contributing to the EU pull emission. For 2012 and the years to come, European Union's role in Afghanistan will be underpinned by strong focus on police reform, electoral reform, advancing and supporting reforms of public administration and supporting ongoing efforts in both the peace process and the heart of Asia initiative. However, support provided by the European Union will only bear tangible results if it is underpinned by genuine Afghan commitment and leadership to address governance issues. To elaborate, in the broader context of transition the international community has begun to sense a change of focus of the Afghan national police to a civilian directed police service. At the moment we are finalizing European Union's Heads of Mission contribution to the strategic review of the EU pull EU police mission review which will most likely produce a report suggesting that you pull should sustain its presence in Afghanistan in close cooperation with NTMA which is NATO training mission about specializing in the skills which are so needed for any democratic country for any country who respects the rule of law and that is civilian police training rather than paramilitary police training which has been occurring up till now. EU pull has been contributing significantly in that process and last year alone have trained more than 6,000 individuals primarily for the leadership skills in civilian police investigation and the rule of law electoral reform will be a key component in putting in place functioning institutions in Afghanistan. We do support the Afghan led sustainable electoral reform process. The Afghans are very anxious not to experience imposition or any kind of force from outside what they need to do with respect of course the views and the ownership and leadership but at the same time the expertise which have been gathered in the course of last few elections also due to the presence of EU electoral assessment team will certainly be a positive contribution for the Afghan own process. We also encourage that they have to do that in a consultative manner so that the process would be led not only by the government but also including the representatives of civic society, political parties and the independent election commission. Public administration reform and civil service reform will remain a priority and without public administration reforms there is little perspective of establishing a professional and efficient civil service nor for retaining in the public service the staff which we international governments have trained. The European Union has also made clear its support for peace process and will continue to advocate an inclusive process including women and northern constituencies whose leaders fear that the outcome of the peace process risks undermining civil and political rights gains made in recent years. We'll continue to reiterate to regional states that peace in Afghanistan is in the interest of the region and call on Afghanistan's neighbors including Pakistan to play a constructive role in any peace process but ultimately only a process led by the Afghan government with the involvement of Afghan civil society leaders and grassroots activists in the provinces and support of regional states can lead to a sustainable settlement in Afghanistan. As the most successful model of economic and political integration European Union is also supporting regional cooperation the heart of Asia initiative at the moment we have ongoing projects worth of 22 million euros which are dealing with putting in place a border control between Central Asian republics and Afghanistan developing and constructing and developing manuals for the customs academy of Afghanistan as well as supporting regional cooperation center in Afghanistan. Later this year the regional stakeholders will meet in Kabul and hopefully will define agree on a set of confidence building measures which will help to put in place start building a new paradigm of relationship between amongst the countries based on trust and confidence gradual trust and confidence rather than conflicting national interest. Here European Union is an attractive model so is organization for cooperation and security in Europe with a three-dimensional approach and acquired expertise in areas such as confidence building and conflict resolution as well as human rights and rule of law in particular in the field of elections. Thanks to to Lithuania and whose chairmanship the OEC in 2011 put Afghanistan on the on the priority list of OEC areas of engagement and the ministers in in December issued a statement on strengthening the OEC engagement with Afghanistan. I look forward to working with Irish chairmanship of the OEC this year as regards Afghanistan and I think there are indeed special and unique unique capabilities of the OEC which could be an expertise which could be applied in the region. It is pretty clear that Afghanistan needs more than effective security to leave behind 30 years of war. What we need is a truly long-term sustainable political and economic strategy for Afghanistan which is led by the Afghan government. I believe that an international community as a whole can play a substantial part in making this happen through increased cooperation with each other and with the Afghan government. The challenge facing us is how to make this happen. Looking at 2014 and beyond we need to make the transition from a military-led to a civilian-led approach. When international combat troops leave in 2014 Afghanistan will still be one of the poorest countries in the world and will still need significant assistance from the international community for the foreseeable future. However as other examples of conflict states have taught us nations must find their own way forward and their own resources to support the development to secure a sustainable future for themselves. This is why European Union for example is committed to forge a long-term partnership with Afghanistan. Thank you very much for your attention and I'll be glad to answer your questions or to listen to your remarks. Thank you very much.