Let me express my gratitude towards our hosts and the organizers of this conference, who did an excellent job to further promote the relationship between the Asian political parties. Furthermore, I would especially like to thank you for giving Konrad Adenauer Foundation the opportunity to attend this conference, to participate in the working groups and to give this short presentation — I feel indeed very privileged and honoured to address this eminent gathering of Asian political party representatives.

Since Konrad Adenauer Foundation is not an Asian political party, it might be appropriate to give you a short introduction into our work:

Konrad Adenauer Foundation is a German political foundation named after the first German Chancellor after World War II and with strong links to the Christian Democratic Union, one of the Germany’s major political parties. Traditionally, international cooperation has been one of the principle aims of its activities. The Konrad Adenauer Foundation supports European unification, and promotes international understanding. Its activities include political education, preparing scientific analyses to serve as a basis for future political action, extending scholarships to gifted students, and researching the history of the Christian Democratic movement.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The conference’s working groups cover three important issues, all related each other and with impacts on the national as well as worldwide progress and development. Since Konrad Adenauer Foundation has special expertise in the fields of political party building, please allow me to say only a few words with regard to the first two points of discussion and to lay emphasis on the third issue.

Regional Security and Multilateral Cooperation are important for national, regional and worldwide stability. For example-as we have seen recently-new threats for all civilized nations have developed especially in the field of international terrorism. Without co-operation on all levels, terrorism won’t be defeated. For Asian countries, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is a good example as how regional co-operation mechanisms can improve the security situation not only in “traditional” fields as border disputes, but also with regard to new challenges of international terrorism. With the creation of the Tashkent Anti-Terror Center, the member countries of SCO have a means to coordinate anti-terror measures and to collect cross-borde data in a region crucial for the fight against terrorism. There are many other cooperation mechanisms in the Asian region. Some of them have established even contacts to those of other regions. A good example for such a cross-regional multilateral co-operation beyond Asia is for example the ASEM process. Our foundation is supporting this process through the EU-ASEAN annual dialogues launched 1999 in Manila, which from this year onward will be enlarged to be ASEAN+3 — EU think tank dialogue.

Economic Growth and Social Progress are important for worldwide peace and prosperity as well. In order to guarantee both, it is necessary to bring the interests involved into a balance: Economic development must be sustainable, especially with regard to the protection of social weak groups or the environment. It is my opinion that the improvement of everybody’s living conditions can be reached best by a social market economy system, for example as it has been practiced with great success on a national level in Germany. According to our experience, economic development is only sustainable if large parts of the population can profit from it which is a prerequisite for achieving social justice. Ideally, this principle should be applied also at the international level. In this context, hopefully the current negotiations in the framework of the WTO will eventually be successful to this effect.

Let me now come to the third point of discussion: Political Parties and National Development.

Political parties are indispensable for societies which are structured around democratic principles. For this reason the Konrad Adenauer Foundation seeks to establish contacts and cooperation with political parties wherever possible.

We do support projects which are designed to promote and strengthen political parties as to their roles and responsibilities, their organization and development, their programmatic design and party-to-party exchange among them.

In this process, much attention is being devoted to the formation of a

— widespread,

— pluralistic

— reform-oriented and

— democratically structured

range of political parties and their dialogue in all the continents.

As such political party dialogue is one of the main focuses of the Foundation in our Asian work programme as we firmly believe in the importance of party dialogue besides other forms of official dialogue such as the official meeting among Governments and the on-going Track-Two consultation process.

Mr. Chairman, looking back at the initial ICAPP meeting in Manila, which was to start a process of building bridges and creating a culture of cooperation among Asia’s political parties so that through such partnership a common strategy for Asia in the coming decades could be articulated for the first time: this idea had actually been initiated by then Speaker of the Philippines the Honourable Mr. Jose de Venecia-a visionary political personality with abundant experience-together with the two German Foundations, i.e. the Hanns Seidal Foundation and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.

And we are very proud and happy that this idea has meamwhile developed into an undertaking of this formidable size.

The preceding two ICAPP Conferences have indeed brought together vast segments of political party leaders and opinion leaders from all over Asia to deliberate together on issues of vital importance for the future of this Continent in particular and the World in general.

The two Declarations adopted by ICAPP I and ICAPP II are remarkable both in terms of content and coverage. They provide good and valuable benchmarks and guideposts as to how political parties could contribute to coping with the challenges Asia is faced now and in the future.

The Konrad Adenauer foundation is committed towards the idea of ICAPP and is looking forward to future opportunities of working together with Asian political parties including in their party-to-party exchanges.