ms. babich is here. yes, former ambassador. and i am not sure whether former congressman jim kolbe is with us, i don't see him but he's expected to be here. we welcome each of the distinguished guests and of course we welcome the president. i want to thank this event's co-sponsors, the inter-american dialogue, the council of the americas represented here today by the dialogue president, peter hakim and eric fonts' -- fonzworth. president alvaro uribe was elected in 2002. he inherited tremendous challenges, decades of violence that plagued his country but under his leadership over the last seven years columbia has made remarkable strides towards peace, security, stability and prosperity. he expanded the armed forces. he oversaw the demobilization of over 30,000 paramilitary fighters, ferc and eln suffered more than 10,000 defections and numerous setbacks at the hands of government forces. including the rescue of three united states citizens and several other hostages nearly a year ago. 2006 the colombian people demonstrated thei

ms. babich. >> i am a washington lawyer and a member of a much more elite group which is i am a former willson scholar. i have a question about internally displaced people in colombia. as you know and this audience knows columbia has the second-largest number of internally displaced persons in the world. you have a man who probably qualifies for safe food who has taken on the job, but it's a big job and i wish you would talk of the but more about your plans for expanding the scope of what he's doing and what you are doing with this very large population. >> yes. we have to protect internally displaced people and the other is to of bataan the people coming from the terrorist groups. to internally displaced people we have increased the [inaudible] for many people this is a very negative incentive. last year in the number of internally displaced people, we 156,000 people who were in accordance with the declaration. they were displaced in between 1957 and 1987. therefore we, our policy regarding internally displaced people has invited people displaced even in the middle of the last century to come