[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 29, Number 47 (Monday, November 29, 1993)]
[Pages 2423-2424]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Exchange With Reporters Following Discussions With APEC Leaders in 
Seattle

 November 20, 1993

Outcome of the Meetings

    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----
    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

[[Page 2424]]

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.

APEC and the European Community

    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.

Future APEC Meetings

    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.