Press Conference by the Press Secretary 9 November, 1999

1. Announcement on the Meeting of the Inter-sessional Support Group of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF)
2. Announcement on the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) Resolution at the First Committee of the United Nations General Assembly
3. Japan's position on the current situation in the Republic of Indonesia
4. Concerning the role of the United Nations in defining national sovereignty

1. Announcement on the Meeting of the Inter-sessional Support Group of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF)

   Press Secretary Sadaaki Numata: Good afternoon. My first announcement concerns the meeting of the Inter-sessional Support Group of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) on Confidence Building Measures. This meeting will take place on 13 and 14 November in Tokyo at the Takanawa Prince Hotel. These Inter-sessional Support Group meetings take place in the interval between the ministerial meetings, which take place every year. The senior officials of the countries concerned take part in this. In this inter-sessional period -- that is the period leading up to the next ministerial meeting scheduled for next summer -- there will be two meetings of this Inter-sessional Supporting Group. The first meeting will be co-chaired by Japan and Singapore. Twenty one member countries of ARF and representatives of the European Union (EU) will participate in this meeting and there will be primarily officials from the foreign ministries and the defense ministries or agencies of the countries concerned. Deputy Director-General Nobuaki Tanaka of the Foreign Policy Bureau will be participating and will be co-chairing the meeting. In this meeting, the participants are expected to look at the confidence building measures in the ARF process from an overall perspective and are also expected to discuss such topics as the regional security situation and the future orientations of ARF.

   Related Information (Japan-ASEAN Relations)
   
2. Announcement on the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) Resolution at the First Committee of the United Nations General Assembly

   Mr. Numata: My second announcement concerns the adoption of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) Resolution at the First Committee of the United Nations General Assembly. We welcome the adoption of the CTBT Resolution at the First Committee on 8 November New York time, which was proposed by Japan, the Commonwealth of Australia, the United Mexican States, New Zealand, the United States of America, and the Islamic Republic of Iran. This resolution was adopted with the support of an overwhelming majority, including the United States, the People's Republic of China and the Russian Federation -- the three nuclear powers which have not yet ratified the Treaty. The Resolution welcomes the final declaration at the Conference on Facilitating the Entry into Force of the CTBT held in Vienna in October. You may recall that the former Minister for Foreign Affairs Masahiko Koumura participated in and actually chaired that meeting. The Resolution also encourages the countries which have not yet ratified the Treaty to do so. Japan would like to engage in active diplomacy with a view to maintaining and developing this momentum for the international community. In order to encourage the countries which have not yet ratified the CTBT we intend to strengthen our overall diplomatic efforts by, for example, dispatching missions to the countries concerned, and by making active use of the Official Development Assistance (ODA), including cooperation through ODA to enhance the monitoring techniques on the part of the countries concerned.

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3. Japan's position on the current situation in the Republic of Indonesia

   Q: What is happening in Indonesia, where there is a second province close to breaking up? As Japan is the leader of Asia, what is it doing to save Indonesia?

   Mr. Numata: You would hardly expect a spokesman to comment on a country and say that it is breaking up. I think, that the truth in fact is very far from that because through the democratic process of a general election which took place earlier this year and through the election of the President and the Vice President in the Indonesian Parliament (MPR), they have chosen President Abdurrahman Wahid and Vice President Sukarnoputri Megawati. I think that the combination of President Wahid and Vice President Megawati is widely perceived in the international community as a very important step toward stability in the Republic of Indonesia in the sense that this leadership represents a very good balance of the various forces in Indonesia.

   They have also formulated the new Cabinet, and if you look at the composition of the Cabinet again, it strikes a very good balance among the different forces and also signifies some change in the makeup of the ministers concerned, for example, in the appointment of an ethnic Chinese to the very important post of Coordinating Minister for Economic and Developmental Affairs and the choice of a civilian to the post of Minister of Defense and so forth. In light of all this, we do look forward to engaging in dialogue with the new Indonesian leaders and it is certainly our intention to continue to extend whatever help we can as the new Government of Indonesia tries to tackle the challenges that it faces in terms of continuing with the development and fostering of further stability in that country. On the question of what some of the provinces in Indonesia aspire to achieve and so forth, we regard this as an interal matter for Indonesia and we trust in the ability of the new Indonesian leadership to manage these problems smoothly.

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4. Concerning the role of the United Nations in defining national sovereignty

   Q: Do you think that the United Nations should have a role in defining national sovereignty? What is Japan's position on this?

   Mr. Numata: Again, I think that is a question which perhaps is more suitable for an academic discourse which may take a full day. Let me say that the role of the United Nations is different in this day and age, where disputes and conflicts of many kinds take place, the nature of which may be somewhat different from the kind of conflicts and incidents that we used to see in the Cold War era. The whole question of the role of the United Nations is a subject of very serious thinking on the part of many people concerned, and the experiences of Kosovo, and East Timor -- to take recent examples -- have, if anything, brought this question into sharper relief. Obviously, this is the sort of subject which requires very careful and thoughtful consideration by all the members of the United Nations and we will be happy to participate in that sort of effort. Beyond that, I think I would refer the very fundamental question that you have raised to the host of academics and historians who abound in this world.

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