It is a great pleasure to have this opportunity to exchange with my colleague Foreign Minister Alatas in his capacity as ASEAN's dialogue partner, The scope and depth of our discussions over the last two days at the ASEAN Regional Forum and this Post-Ministerial Conference reflect both ASEAN's great achievements and the growing importance of our partnership.

On my trips to Southeast Asia, I have seen first-hand the remarkable changes taking place in this region. In the space of a generation, ASEAN's economies have gone from selling tin and rubber to making microchips and automobiles. From Bangkok to Bandung the children of a growing middle class now have opportunities and freedoms that their grandparents might not have imagined. Here in Indonesia -- the most populous ASEAN nation -- per capita income has risen tenfold in the last three decades, an achievement that mirrors the strides that this nation has made in providing for the health, education and welfare of its people.

I have also seen how ASEAN has progressed from upholding a fragile unitv to advancing a unique vision of cooperation. Born amid the turmoil of the Vietnam War, ASEAN came full circle last year when Vietnam joined as a full member. Now you are consolidating the peace that you helped to achieve in Indochina. Through this PMC process, as well as the, ARF, the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA), and your participation in APEC, you have helped-all-the nations in the region to forge a common approach to common Challenges.

Strong ties with ASEAN are an essential element of America's engagement in the Asia-Pacific region. Indeed, because we are a Pacific power, we are committed to working with ASEAN in a partnership that advances a growing range of shared security, economic and political intersts.

We welcome the strong support that your nations continue to provide for our security presence -- the strategic underpinning of the stability and prosperity that the Asia-Pacific region has enjoyed during the last half-century, Our alliances with Australia, the Philippines and Thailand, and our access arrangements with other ASEAN countries, provide the anchor in Southeast Asia for our unshakable commitment to security across tile Pacific.

We look forward to deepening the cooperation and ties among our armed services. Our nations and the region benefit from the military exercises that we conduct including Cobra Gold, the Pacific

Command’s largest joint exercise. They benefit from the continued U.S. access to commercial and military facilities which help to ensure trip readiness of our forces. They benefit from the provision of training that emphasizes the importance of civillian control over the military and respect for basic universal human rights. And they benefit from the sale of U.S military technology that enables ASEAN nations to meet their legitimate defense needs.

This PMC process and the ASEAN regional Forum complement our bilateral security relationship by providing a valuable opportunity to discuss pressing regional and global security issues. Whether peace on the Korean Peninsula, the completion of a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, or the fight against transnational threats, the United States and ASEAN stand to gain by deepening our cooperation across a board front. Indeed, our strategic and economic interests are deeply intertwined. Only by working together to promote security and stability can we hope to sustain the economic dynamism of the Asia-Pacific region.

To day the ASEAN nations form a half-trillion-dollar regional economy that is expected to double in size over the next decade. With expanding middle classes, swelling demand for consumer goods and services and need for infrastructure, ASEAN looms large in the strategies of American companies -- ,and has attracted the attention of the United States Government as one of the world's ten Big Emerging Markets.

The United States has been proud to participate in and contribute to this spectacular development, To-way-trade between the United States and ASEAIN reached $101 billion in 1995, having expanded nearly 50% over the last two years. ASEAN has become our third largest overseas export market. American investment in the re-ion now exceeds $25 billion. From building power plants and producing computer equipment to-selling insurance and operating communications networks, the U,S, commercial presence in the region is as varied as it is enormous.

The United States strongly supports ASEAN's commitment to regional liberalization and greater openness to the global economy at the same time, New patterns of trade and investment are linking markets and blurring borders throughout Southeast Asia. AFTA's goal of cutting tariffs by 2000 will spur faster growth and deeper integration among the region's economies and will contribute to our APEC goal of free and open trade by 2020,

The ASEAN economies already boast many of the defining elements of a world-class business environment, and progress continues to be made that inspires confidence in the future, Government are reinforcing their commitment to market reforms. Workforces are gaining technical sophistication. Private sector companies are themselves in the. high-pressure crucible of competition. Physical and financial infrastructures are expanding to meet the demands of growth.

But in this fast-forward world in which the only constant is change, no country or region -- including the United States -- can relax its drive for improvement. As I suggested at our 7-plus-1 session last year in Brunei,. ASEAN's ability to make concrete progress in meeting several specific challenges call make it an even more powerful magnet for international investment and trade.

First , we strongly support efforts to complete an AFTA agreement on intellectual property rights that meets the highest international standards. A strong agreement will attract potential investors and foster a research environment more conducive to local development of technologies such as computer software. To further strengthen investor confidance, we also call on ASEAN members to implement rapidly the global agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Propety Protection. At the same time, we urge individual ASEAN countries to toughen enforcement of their national laws.

Second, we welcome efforts to reach an AFTA agreement on liberalizing trade in services--especially financial services. Doing so by 1997 can give crucial and timely impetus to the important global agreement in financial services that we are pursuing through the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Thrid, we believe it is also in the interest of the ASEAN nations to open up competition in their massive emerging telecommunications markets, and to treat all service providers equally. All over the world, governments are breaking up long-entrenched monopolies to encourage price competition and improve service. Such liberalization can be supported by the creation of independent regulatory bodies that will follow non-discriminatory and transparent procedures to safeguard againts monopoly domination of markets.

Fourth, we urge ASEAN to develop transparent, fair and consistent guidelines for government procurement contracts. Such guidelines would ensure that the region has the benefit of the most competitive, cost-efficient contracts for the airports, port facilities, telecommunications and traffic systems that it needs to sustain investment and growth.

Finally, we also urge focused international action againts the presistent problem of illicit payments. Briberry and corruption undermine productive development, discourage foreign investment, erode the rule of law, and prevent fair competition on level playing filed. For all these reasons, I have called attention to this problem in this every regent of the world and led and efforts on behalf of the United State to established common practices among OECD nations. As booming market economies that seek to attract foreign investment and build convidence in public institutions, the ASEAN Nations have responsibility to promote transparent competition.

Meeting is of these challenges will improve the region's business environment, and benefit both the ASEAN Nations and their trading partners. It will also extend reach and strengthen the rules of the open trading system that has been essential to this region's economic rise.

Late this year, to ASEAN Nations will fittingly share the responsibility of leadership on behalf of the global trading system firts, when the Philippines hosts the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Manila in November; and second, when Singapore hosts the first Ministerial Meeting of the World Tarde Organization (WTO) one month later.

The United States and Indonesia share a particular interest in APEC's success. Three years ago, President Clinton brought APEC leaders together for the first time and focused the region's economies on a vision of unbounded economic growth and integration through unprecedented liberalization and cooperation. Two years ago President Soeharto forged the consensus among the APEC members economies to achieve open and Free Trade and Investment across the region by 2020. This year President Ramos will have our full support as he takes on the critical taks of ensuring that we move ahead with the implementation of the OSAKA action Agenda that Japan did much to shape last November.

We are encouraged by the start the APEC that member economies have made in crafting individual action plans to reads our common goals. It is essential that our plan are comprehensive and comparable -- the keys to realizing our share vision of and open Pacific Marketplace. It is also essential that we continue to develop the economic cooperation that can make the APEC region the most modern business environment in the world.

The WTO Ministerial should promote the full implementation of the commitments we made in the uruguay round agreement and galvanize our reports to conclude the round's " unfinished business " especially in services. The United States and ASEAN will both benefit from reaching agreements in 1997 that embrace hight standards of openness in two key service sectors-- financial services and telecommunications. In both negoitiations we look to ASEAN nations to make new offers on open access and investment that are substantially more forthcoming.

In Singapore we should also begin to set the WTO's prioroties for the early 21st century. We should strive to open up key sector, for instance by confidering an information technology agreement in that vital sector. We should also place new emphasis government procurement. An Agreement to increase transparancy can be a first step toward more comprehensive liberalization of the sector.

Another WTO priority for the United States to begin a dialogue on the relationship between trade encore labour standards. Our approach recognizes that different countries have different comparative advantages, including different wage levels. But workers everywhere should have the benefit of internationally recognized basic workers that we have all endorsed such as freedom of association and an end to child labor exploitation and forced labor. Ensuring such protection is also essential to maintaning the consesus for further trade liberalization in the United States around the world.

By striving together to ensure the success of the WTO and APEC, the United States and ASEAN can sustain the momentum for regional and global liberalization that already produced such dramatic breakthroughts in this decade. We can also greatly further the process of regional integration that has done so much to strengthen our partnership over the past decade. I look forward to working with you today to lay the groundwork for progress to come.

Thank you very much.