[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book II)]
[November 19, 1993]
[Pages 2025-2026]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at a Dinner for the APEC Forum and Business Leaders in Seattle
November 19, 1993

    To my fellow leaders of the APEC nations and distinguished guests, 
we gather here tonight in Washington State at an historic moment. At 
least two other times during this century a great global struggle has 
ended and a new era has dawned. That has happened again today. It falls 
to each of us, as it fell to leaders then, to imagine and to build a new 
future for our people. I deeply appreciate the willingness that each of 
you has shown to make the long trip here to be together today.
    I want to express my appreciation for the warm hospitality of the 
people and the elected officials of this beautiful city of Seattle in 
the Evergreen State of Washington. All of us in the Asian Pacific live 
as neighbors in a region that has long been characterized by both its 
commerce and its conflicts. The question for our future is whether we 
can reap the bounty of the Pacific without bringing its storms. There 
are vast differences among our economies and our people; yet these can 
be a great source of enrichment.
    I hear the complex music of our many differing languages, and I know 
that in each of them our words for work, for opportunity, for children, 
for hope carry the same meaning. I see the roots of our many ancient 
civilizations, whether Confucian or Islamic or Judeo-Christian. I know 
there is much we can learn from each other's rich and proud cultures. 
Above all, I look at the perpetual motion of this region's ports, its 
factories, its shipping lanes, its inventors, its workers, its 
consumers, and I know we are all united in a desire to convert that 
restless energy into better lives for our people.
    Tomorrow all of us will go for a day of discussion on beautiful 
Blake Island. I believe that discussion can help to foster among us a 
sense of community, not a community of formal, legal economic 
integration as in Europe but a community such as neighbors create when 
they sit down together over coffee or tea to talk about house repairs or 
their children's schools, the kind of community that families and 
friends create when they gather on holidays to rejoice in

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their common blessings. Such gatherings are not driven by charters or 
bylaws but by shared interests and aspirations, bonds that are often 
more powerful, enduring than those which are written down.
    So it is with this community I hope we can create together. We have 
common concerns about the conditions in our neighborhood, about regional 
trade barriers, about our shared environment. We have common 
aspirations: good jobs for our workers, rising standards of living for 
our children, and peace among our nations. And now we have a common 
forum for pursuing our common goals. Tonight and tomorrow let us 
continue developing a shared sense of purpose as expansive as the ocean 
that unites our lands.
    Our great novelist Herman Melville once wrote this about the Pacific 
Ocean. He said it rolls the midmost waters of the world, the Indian 
Ocean and the Atlantic being but its arms. Thus this mysterious, divine 
Pacific zones the world's whole bulk about, makes all coasts bay to it, 
seams the tide beating of the Earth.
     Working as partners we have an historic opportunity to harness the 
tides of the Pacific so that they may lift all our people to a better 
future.
    Tonight I ask each and every one of you here to join me in a toast 
to the Pacific community, a region at peace, prosperous, and free. Hear, 
hear.
    Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 8:30 p.m. in the Spanish Ballroom at the 
Four Seasons Hotel.