we're very pleased to have scott grisham, -- graiton. he grew up in the republic of the condo. -- congo. in 1995 he was part of the operations group in saudi arabia, he oversaw the operation with the no-fly zone over iraq, and among his assignments in 2000 and 2001, he was the deputy director of operations in washington and was the director of strategy planning, the policy director of the united states european command. he speaks swahili and has a master's from rutgers, and georgetown. he was appointed as the special envoy to the sudan on march 18, 2009. we're very happy to have him here today. >> thank you for that kind introduction. i appreciate the opportunity to share some of the things that i have learned since becoming the special envoy. i will give you an idea of what we plan to do in the next few months. since the 18th of march i have made three trips overseas, and the first was to the sudan, darfur, nand the second was to doha and cairo. the last trip was to london and paris and beijing. i have learned that we need to have const