THE PRESIDENT: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. As we approach the end of a week of APEC activities, we've just completed three hours of meetings among 14 APEC economic leaders. It's been a pleasure for me and an honor for the United States to host this week's events and to convene this historic meeting on this beautiful island.

The Asian Pacific region will provide an increasingly vital role for our nation and the world. The region is home to 40 percent of the world's people, include the world's fastest growing economies, and the leaders standing here represent half the world's economic output.

This week's events have been a success for all the region's peoples. We've laid a foundation for regional efforts to create jobs, raise incomes, expand business opportunities and foster regional harmony. This week we took several tangible steps toward these goals.

On Monday and Tuesday over 1,500 business people engaged in trade came together to focus on the region's potential to benefit their bottom lines. Later in the week, our ministers agreed to a package of market-opening measures designed to help bring the Uruguay Round to the GATT to a successful conclusion by December 15th. And the ministerial meeting agreed to develop an action plan in the near future to reduce barriers to business throughout our region, such as differing product standards.

The capstone of this week's activities has been this first-ever leaders meeting. Our discussions this morning, which will continue in the afternoon, give us a chance to become better acquainted and to compare our visions for our own nations and for our diverse and dynamic region. By meeting and talking we've been able to forge a stronger regional identity and a stronger purpose. That purpose is captured in the Vision Statement we just released.

The statement sets forth our shared view of a regional economy characterized by openness, cooperation, dynamic growth, expanded trade, improved transportation and communications and high-skilled, high-paying jobs. We've welcomed the challenge of the Eminent Persons Group to achieve free trade in the Asian Pacific region, advance global trade liberalization, and launch concrete specific programs to move us toward these long-term goals.

In our discussions last evening and today, I've been struck by how many priorities we share -- strong, sustainable economic growth, more open markets, better jobs, working conditions and living standards for our own people, better education for our children and our adults, and protection of the region's unique environment.

Of course, we will not always agree on how to achieve those goals. But at least now, for the first time, our region has a means to hold serious policy discussions on such questions as how to remove trade barriers or how to sustain robust growth.

If you ask me to summarize in a sentence what we've agreed, it is this: We've agreed that the Asian Pacific region should be a united one, not divided. We've agreed that our economic policies should be opened, not closed. We've agreed to begin to express that conviction by doing everything we possibly can to get a good GATT agreement by December the 15th.

With today's meeting, we're helping the Asian Pacific to become a genuine community; not a formal, legal structure, but rather a community of shared interests, shared goals and shared commitment to mutually beneficial cooperation.

The development of that community is certainly in the interest of the American people and all the people of this region. We should be pleased with the progress we've made. And let me say again how honored I am on behalf of the United States to have had the opportunity to host all these leaders.

Thank you very much.