Table Speech by Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama
at the Leaders Dinner hosted
by Prime Minister Murayama
(November 18, 1995 Osaka)
Your Excellencies, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen:
On behalf of the government and people of Japan, it is indeed a great pleasure to welcome you to Osaka on the eve of the APEC Economic Leaders Meeting. Although this is not a working session, I would like, as host, to say a few words about APEC.
Even before that, however, I would like to express my heartfelt appreciation for your support earlier this year following the major earthquake here in the Hanshin-Awaji area. We are sincerely grateful, and I believe this APEC gathering is a major encouragement to the people who are working so hard to recover from this disastrous earthquake.
For hundreds of years, our host city of Osaka has thrived and grown as a free-spirited commercial center, and it is a very appropriate place for APEC, based on economic dynamism as it is, to meet. Because Osaka is also a center of the very tradition-steeped yet very lively Kansai cultural sphere, I hope you will take advantage of this opportunity to experience some of the diversity of Japanese life.
The Asia-Pacific of today is strikingly different from that of even just a few years ago, and it offers an uncertain post-Cold War world hope and promise for the future. Asia-Pacific development is also of historic significance in that it represents a departure from the old pattern of North-South relations between an affluent North and an impoverished South. I am confident that APEC -- regional cooperation among diverse economies seeking to sustain their development -- can serve as a new model of international cooperation.
Ever since accepting the mantle of the Chairmanship of the APEC Economic Leaders Meeting from President Soeharto last year, I have been preoccupied with the question of how best to faithfully discharge the grave responsibility that we bear for preparing a road map for the actual implementation of the historic Bogor Declaration. Our answer, the Action Agenda that we are finalizing, is both a major step forward for concrete APEC action and the first page in a new chapter in Asia-Pacific history.
The job of drawing up a substantive Action Agenda responsive to the diverse concerns of APEC's membership has been a very trying one for Japan as Chair. It was, however, also a very rewarding experience giving us new confidence and satisfaction about the future because we know that this effort to draft an Action Agenda broader than even the Uruguay Round was backed by all of our peoples' creativity, diligence, and vitality and by our determination to move forward in emphasizing market mechanisms, stimulating domestic industry, and taking other economic reform measures. I assure you Japan, for its part, is also working to reform its economic system to build an economy for the new era.
Given this background, the Action Agenda adheres to the unique Asia-Pacific Way premised upon both voluntary initiative and collective action, and I believe this is the most realistic approach for steadily promoting liberalization in this diverse region. We know that promoting further liberalization will enhance economic efficiency and raise living standards throughout the region, and we are adamantly determined to move forward in achieving the goals we set ourselves in Bogor.
Supporting liberalization and facilitation is also among economic and technical cooperation's primary aims, and I hope we can make active use of the Partners for Progress mechanism that Japan proposed, the focus for now being on economic and technical cooperation in such areas.
Japan has decided to contribute a total of up to 10 billion yen to the APEC Central Fund over the next several years in support of appropriate cooperative projects related to the liberalization and facilitation of trade and investment, including expediting the smooth implementation of the Partners for Progress mechanism. I hope the other APEC members will also contribute actively in this same spirit.
So far, I have talked about the significance of promoting liberalization and facilitation, yet our efforts must not be limited to these areas alone. Working to eliminate bottlenecks to economic development, APEC also has an important responsibility for attaining sustainable growth and equitable development. Only when our economic and technical cooperation is integrated with our efforts for liberalization and facilitation will APEC realize its full significance.
Looking ahead, the increased burden that the region's population growth and rapid economic development will put on the environment and on food and energy resources is a major concern not only for our region but for the entire world. I also believe we should discuss how best to deal with these issues to ensure that our prosperity is sustainable.
Likewise, knowing how much your support meant to us in our time of trouble, I think it is entirely appropriate that APEC address disaster-relief cooperation.
In closing, let me remind you that we have a global responsibility not to let the Asia-Pacific become an inward-looking trading bloc. Among the main beneficiaries of the multilateral free-trading system and its firmest adherents, we must, in concert with the WTO, continue to proudly proclaim the principle of open regional cooperation.
Bright with promise, our future is also strewn with challenges, and the path before us will by no means be easy. Yet as I look around this room, I am inspired anew with the courage to meet the challenges ahead for APEC's future.
Trusting that we will have a successful meeting tomorrow, I would like to propose a toast to a brighter future for the Asia-Pacific region and to the continued health and happiness of everyone here today on this historic occasion.
Kanpai!
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