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May 07, 2007
Secretary Rice, Your Excellencies, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen; I am honored to have been asked by my colleagues to speak on behalf of the Pacific leaders and their delegations.
The leaders who are here in Washington for the first time as a group are most grateful for this opportunity to have frank discussions about issues of mutual interest. We appreciate your presence, as well as that of your senior officials and staff. There is a new energy associated with the transformational diplomacy of the United States, and we are pleased to fully participate.
When former President George H. W. Bush in 1990 held his historic Pacific Island Nation Summit at the East-West Center, he emphasized that America views the Pacific not as a great ocean of small islands and tiny populations, but rather, as an Aquatic Continent, the world’s largest, covering a full third of the Earth’s surface…, with each island, like a string of pearls, possessing something unique to contribute to the value of the whole.
We know by your presence with President George W. Bush at the 2003 Pacific Islands Conference of Leaders in Honolulu that you understand the need for all Pacific islands to engage not only with North America, but globally. We view this event as a follow-up to deepen and broaden Pacific engagement with the United States
Our historic linkages among island societies, some of which are today part of the United States, date to the times of long distance voyaging based on advanced indigenous navigational methods. Through our meetings this week, we wish to expand and strengthen mutually beneficial linkages in terms of working together on practical approaches to advancing a number of issues including;
• promoting trade and investment through a newly invigorated JCC process,
• addressing security in its broader sense to include our social, environmental and economic challenges, and;
• Improving access to, and use of, US development assistance, including US AID, expansion of US peace corps and access to the MCA to name a few.
Accessing assistance such as the MCA, requires flexible and innovative mechanisms to accommodate our particular circumstances... In addition we note the proposed US base relocation to Guam offers a number of economic opportunities that other Pacific countries can benefit from.
We are pleased with the placement of security on the agenda. Comprehensive security is an issue of great importance for everyone—for both small and large countries.
For us in the small Pacific Islands, extremities in Climate Change and variability are a major security issue for us. The recent study by the IPCC reiterates that sea-level rise is no longer a matter of conjecture but a reality. We look to our development friends and partners for collaboration to identify ways of adapting to global warming and sea-level rise among the security challenges to the Pacific Islands.
During our three days here we hope to better understand how Washington thinks about the Pacific and the larger Asia-Pacific region. We are also seeking to collectively advance the ways in which we can improve the well being of everyone who calls the Pacific home. In short, as island societies connected by the Pacific Ocean, we wish to see concrete outcomes from our engagement with the United States. This meeting must set those concrete outcomes and establish a more robust mechanism for continued consultation and follow-up.
We wish to take advantage of this declared ‘Year of the Pacific’. Never before have the leaders of Pacific island governments as a whole been received in Washington at this level. We are optimistic that this historic event will establish an important precedent for recurring triennial engagement with a region whose people share with you so many of the same values and aspirations.
In closing, Madame Secretary, we trust and pray that through your good efforts, and the continuing attention we have from the East-West Center, the wellspring of goodwill can grow.
Thank you.
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