U.S. and Hong Kong (2005)

Amb. Hill Seeks To Increase U.S. Involvement with APEC, ASEAN

Hill wants "to thicken up" multilateral diplomacy in Asia-Pacific region

Following is the State Department transcript:

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Press Conference by Ambassador Christopher Hill
Assistant Secretary of State-designate for East Asian and Pacific Affairs
Hong Kong International Airport
March 31, 2005

MC: Thank you for joining us today. I think you all have seen Ambassador Hill's bio. There is one thing I want to clarify at the outset: Ambassador Hill is the Assistant Secretary-designate for East Asia and Pacific Affairs. However, although he has been confirmed, he has not yet been sworn in. So his proper title is "Ambassador" because he is still serving as the Ambassador to Korea, where he has served since last summer. He is also concurrently the head of our delegation to the Six-Party Talks, so you are looking at a very busy man. We're fortunate to have about 20 minutes with him this morning.

We're going to ask him to give a brief set-up of what he is doing in Hong Kong and what he has been doing around the region, and then we'll have a little time for your questions. So without further ado, Ambassador Hill.

AMBASSADOR HILL: Thank you very much. Let me just say it's a real pleasure to be able to come there to Hong Kong. As Susan mentioned, I will be soon starting my job as - or manning my foxhole in Washington - as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs. I will be leaving Seoul on April 12 and beginning it then. In preparation for that task, I thought it would be a good occasion to try to travel around the region and see a few places. I was off in Manila, I went down to Bangkok, and I've come here to Hong Kong.

I've got to confess, I hadn't been to Hong Kong before. It was a place I'd always wanted to get to. Obviously, we're also following very closely what is going on in Hong Kong. We have a great interest in success here, and so I had the opportunity to talk to a number of people. I met with Donald Tsang yesterday. I met with some people from Legco this morning. I met with the American Chamber, indeed being interested in how U.S. business is proceeding and what their perspectives are is very important to me.

Going back to Washington, I suspect I'll be spending a lot of time on something that I've already begun to spend a lot of time on, and that is the Six-Party process and the issue of dealing with the North Korean nuclear programs. I think another area - in fact, this is related to that - is our relationship with China, which is obviously very central to our policy in East Asia/Pacific. Working with China on the Six-Party process and also dealing with China in the whole cross-Strait issue - generally engaging China in what I think will be a key relationship of ours for a generation to come.

I will also be of course dealing with problems in Southeast Asia, and getting down to Bangkok was a good opportunity to see a little of those. I hope to make another trip down to Southeast Asia in the next six weeks or so, down to Singapore, Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur.

Generally, I will also be interested in seeing what we can do to sort of thicken up the multilateral diplomacy in the region. We have an APEC meeting coming up in Korea, but there are also a number of ASEAN events coming up in the next month or two, so I'll be very engaged with that.

Let me just say that it is a real pleasure to come to Hong Kong. What a city, my goodness. A lot of people in Hong Kong describe Hong Kong as very small, but you are listening to someone who has served in places like Albania, so I know what small is. Small is not this beautiful metropolis that I've just seen.

So with those introductory comments, I'll take a couple of questions, and then I'll have to get in the back of the airplane all the way back to Seoul and begin to start packing my suitcases.

Q: Financial Times: What do you mean by "thickening up" multilateral diplomacy in Asia?

AMBASSADOR HILL: As a general proposition, we'd like to see APEC be all it can be, to make sure that it's really doing well in terms of its agenda. We want to work very closely with the ASEAN countries. We have a number of very important issues that we work on in that part of Asia. Generally, I think working through multilateral institutions as well as working bilaterally is very important, so I want to see what we can do there.

Q: Mr. Hill, what would you say about the current U.S.-Chinese relationship?

AMBASSADOR HILL: Well, I think we obviously have a very good relationship with China. We work with China across the board. It's a hugely important relationship to the United States. We work with China on a number of diplomatic issues. We have economic issues. I think China is a relationship that has been important to us and will grow in importance in the coming years. It's very important that we remain in very close contact. We are not going to agree about everything with China, but it's very important that we have a very active dialogue. I was with Secretary Rice in her trip to Beijing just a couple of weeks ago. We look to very much continue that relationship.

Q: I'm from the Vietnamese News Agency. May I ask you that as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia, what would be your idea for dealing with this problem -- some problems in Asia to deal with, do you have any idea?

AMBASSADOR HILL: Any idea for....?

Q: About the policy for Eastern Asia. How do you think about your work in the future to deal with some problems in general?

AMBASSADOR HILL: You mean generally, how do we approach the task? We have some very urgent problems in East Asia. One of them is the one that I've been working on already for several weeks, and that is the North Korean nuclear issue. We also have some other problems that, if not urgent, are certainly very important. That is, working as I said on multilateral issues such as APEC; we have an APEC summit coming up in Korea in November. We're also working with ASEAN countries. We have an agenda to try to work with countries on aspirations for democracy, on human rights issues. We have a pretty broad agenda in Asia.

The economies of Asia continue to be among the fastest-growing in the world. I think it's very important that the U.S. be engaged here. The United States is very much a Pacific country. We need to make sure that the Pacific Ocean is an ocean that joins us rather than divides us. So I think we have a lot of issues ahead, and I would look forward to getting to Vietnam at an early date as well.

Q: Have you been in Vietnam?

AMBASSADOR HILL: I haven't been there yet, but I look forward to getting there at an early date.

Q: Elizabeth Wong, Cable TV. Mr. Hill, during your meeting with Donald Tsang, have you expressed any concerns about Hong Kong? Secondly, it's very possible we will have another interpretation of the Basic Law by the NPC Standing Committee on the term of office for the new Chief Executive here. What's your comment on that?

AMBASSADOR HILL: First of all, I had an excellent meeting with Donald Tsang. But I want to emphasize, this is my first trip to Hong Kong. This is really an introduction to these issues for me, so what I was really doing is staying on very much of a "listening and learning" mode. I wasn't here dispensing too much advice, but rather listening, learning, hearing what people say, hearing what their perspectives are. I think you'll see a lot of listening for me in the early weeks and months of my tenure.

[The Tsang meeting] was a real opportunity to talk to him about these issues related of course to the Basic Law, about the issues related to universal suffrage, and another issues. The same thing with the Legco, where I had the opportunity to meet with some people from very different parties, very different perspectives. It's very clear this is a place that has a real democratic tradition.

Q: Can you say that you have no concerns about democratic progress in Hong Kong?

AMBASSADOR HILL: I would rather say that what I was doing here was to listen to people and to learn about the on-going issues here. And to make clear our interest in seeing that these issues are resolved through dialogue and with the underlying, fundamental principle that it should be on the basis of the rule of law. But I'm not quite willing to have you tell me how to say it.

Q: What issues are you talking about?

AMBASSADOR HILL: We were talking about the issue of the resignation and how that affects the current situation. But again, I don't want to get into our views of two years versus five years, these sorts of things, but also the whole issue of how the Legco operates. I was here on a listen-and-learn mission.

Q: Associated Press: Mr. Hill, can you give us an update on this status of the Six-Party Talks is my first question. Secondly, I just have to press on a little further: On the two-year versus five-year issue, do you think China distorted the law in this case for the sake of political expediency?

AMBASSADOR HILL: First of all, with respect to the Six-Party process, it is very important that we get this process going. I want to emphasize that the U.S. is very much committed to the Six-Party process. This is absolutely the best way to proceed. There is no question that this format is the best format because the issue of nuclear programs in North Korea is not a bilateral issue. This is not just an issue for the United States. This is an issue for all the countries in the region.

We feel that China has a special role, as host of this process, to make sure it gets everyone to the table. We know that China is trying to do that, and we're trying to do that as well. But what we look forward to is resolving this problem through dialogue and through the Six-Party process. I don't have an update except that we're still waiting for the North Koreans to figure out how to get back to the table because we don't think there is any other solution for North Korea than to come to the table. We feel it's very much in North Korea's interest to come to the table. We hope that they will see their interest more clearly than they have in the past few months and will be able to come back to the table.

Again, with respect to the Hong Kong issue, I'm trying to understand this. I'm listening. I'm learning about it. I don't want to get into commenting on the issue of two versus five years, etc.

Q: CNBC: Just to follow up on what you said about going back to the table. What will the U.S. or the Six-Party organization do if the North Koreans don't agree to negotiate on the elimination of the nuclear program?

AMBASSADOR HILL: I think it's important that we don't want to get into discussing other options. What we're looking at right now is to solve this through the Six-Party process. There is no question in our minds that this is the best way to solve this. If it doesn't work, obviously, we'll have to look to see what other ways could be used to address it. But one option that is not available to us is to walk away from this. We have to solve this, and we have to solve in a very real way on the basis of complete denuclearization in the Korean peninsula.

There is a strong logic for getting this done. If you look at North Korea's top problems that they confront -- and they confront many very, very serious problems -- you can see that nuclear weapons won't solve any of those. It should be pretty obvious to all of us that it's not just in our interest to solve this, not just in China's interest, or Japan's interest, or South Korea's. It's also in North Korea's interest.

Q: RTHK: Ambassador, are you convinced that China is doing all that it can to get North Korea to the table? And secondly, what are your concerns about jurisdictional disputes about the (inaudible) islands, particularly between Japan and China?

AMBASSADOR HILL: Well, those issues -- some of those with respect to Korea and Japan -- those issues need to be resolved, clearly, through dialogue. With respect to North Korea, I know that the Chinese are exerting a lot of effort in this regard. I know that they've intensively raised this issue, both in meetings they've had in Pyongyang and meetings in Beijing. We'll have to see if those efforts are going to be sufficient.

I think all of the Six-Party participants need to make sure that they are doing all they can. We are in touch with the Chinese quite frequently. In fact, I'm in touch with South Korean, Japanese as well, and the Russian participants to see what we can get done. It is clear that this has to be resolved. We are not going to walk away from this issue.

Q: But you're satisfied with the Chinese efforts?

AMBASSADOR HILL: I think the Chinese and we all need to keep working on this because I don't think any of us can be satisfied with any efforts until we get this thing going.

MC: Thank you very much, Ambassador Hill. Unfortunately, he has a plane to catch.

AMBASSADOR HILL: Thank you.

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