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Your
Excellencies
Ladies and Gentlemen.
I would like to
thank you personally, Mr. Chairman, and the
Chief Executive, the Executive Council and the
people of Hong Kong for receiving us with such
courtesy and hospitality. Thank you very much
indeed. It is a pleasure to here in one of our
region’s most famous centres of business,
commerce and international trade.
May I also offer my own welcome to the Kingdom
of Saudi Arabia and the Kingdom of Tonga on
becoming members of the World Trade Organisation.
Mr. Chairman,
What this meeting means to us can be very
briefly put.
Brunei Darussalam is small country and our
influence naturally reflects that. Like all our
colleagues, our concern is to do what we can to
help this meeting reach a successful conclusion.
Above and beyond that, however, we value the
World Trade Organisation for its own sake.
We see it is as one of the most important
pillars of the world order. For us, it reflects
our people’s commitment to multilateralism. By
this, we mean sharing experiences, learning from
each other and working together in partnership.
We mean dialogue and negotiation no matter how
difficult and frustrating the process may be
and, above all, we mean diplomacy, compromise
and consensus. So, we come to this meeting to
support this system.
Mr. Chairman,
In this spirit, we have two simple hopes.
The first concerns the technical aspects of
international trade negotiations.
We respect their complexity and the political
framework within which they are set. Recognising
this, we are encouraged that there has been
progress made in the negotiations in Geneva.
Like all developing nations, we would like to
see this meeting build on that success and make
further progress towards completing the Doha
Round. We therefore hope that the framework I
have mentioned will find room for the equally
complex principle of “fairness”.
We use the term “fairness” because that is the
one our people constantly use. In using it here,
we express our second hope for this meeting, Mr.
Chairman.
We hope that this meeting will increase our
people’s confidence in multilateral action in
many other essential areas.
We believe such confidence will only come if the
Doha Development Agenda becomes far more than
just an ‘agenda’. By this, we mean real and
visible ‘development world’ and, by
‘development’, we mean changes that improve
day-to-day lives in the developing world.
We fear a situation emerging that amounts to
“every country and every region for itself”. In
developing nations, this would affect long-term
peace, stability and security. It could lead to
many social and political problems.
So, our second hope is a very important overall
one.
We hope to leave this meeting able to assure our
people that the work of the WTO can offer them
confidence in multilateralism and world order.
For us, Mr. Chairman, this confidence is as
important as the details of any specific
negotiations and we will do all we can to work
with fellow members to strengthen it.
Thank you. |
