    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book II)]
    [November 20, 1993]
    [Pages 2035-2036]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Exchange With Reporters Following Discussions With APEC Leaders in
    Seattle
    November 20, 1993

        Q. Mr. Clinton, are you pleased at the outcome of today's meeting?
        The President. Yes, and we agreed to meet again next year in
    Indonesia.
        Q. When you look back on this how will you----

    [[Page 2036]]

        The President. I think 10 years from now people will look back on
    this meeting as a very historic meeting because we agreed to meet and
    then we agreed to meet again next year to work on a number of issues of
    mutual concern to our people. I think this is really the assurance that
    the people need that our region will remain unified and committed to an
    open economy.
        Q. Standing here with leaders of the Pacific Rim, what's your
    message to the European Community?
        The President. That we want them to be part of an open economy, too;
    this is not an exclusive operation. We want the Asia-Pacific community
    to be united but not closed, united but open. And what we want to say to
    Europe is we're committed to doing everything we can to get a good GATT
    agreement between now and December 15th; we want your help, let's do it.
        Q. What about us? [Laughter]
        The President. I thought it was the pool----
        Q. No, no----
        The President. [Inaudible]--in Indonesia. President Soeharto has
    invited us to meet in Indonesia next year. We decided to do it. We
    agreed on a number of very specific things that we would work on over
    the coming year. And the message again is that we want this community to
    be united, not divided, and open, not closed.
        I was asked a question over there, ``What's the message to Europe?''
    The message to Europe is we want this to be a united but open community
    and we want Europe to work with us to get a good GATT agreement by the
    end of the year. That's the message we want to send to our European
    friends. We don't want an exclusive trading bloc, we want them to join
    us in a new world trading system.
        Q. Do you feel these countries are all as open to the United States
    as you'd like them to be?
        The President. Well, we talked about that. That's one of the reasons
    that we're meeting here so that we can do more business with each other.
    And we talked about some specific things we might do to work toward
    that: the development of some nonbinding but agreed-upon principles for
    investment and access, the development of some technology transfer
    programs that could really help the United States in working with other
    countries with severe environmental problems, for example.
        So we have made the commitments that I think we need to make at this
    meeting to move to a position where this community will be an even
    better thing for the United States to be a part of on terms that
    everyone can win on. So we're very hopeful. But the first thing we hope
    we can do is get a new world trade agreement by the end of the year.
        Q. So will this be an annual event, the leaders of the APEC----
        The President. Well, no, it's going to happen twice. You'll see us
    next year. We'll see if we'll decide to do it again. Now we're all going
    to Jakarta. This will be--for the Americans it will be interesting. Sign
    up for the trip now. [Laughter]
        Q. [Inaudible]--difficult for you to communicate from various areas
    of Asia-Pacific area--is it difficult for you to communicate to us
    naturally or a very comfortable situation?
        The President. Oh, I think it's like all other human relations, the
    more we're together the more natural it is. It got better as it went
    along--like life.

    Note: The exchange began at 3:05 p.m. on Blake Island. A tape was not
    available for verification of the content of this exchange.