Director Ian Anthony,
Dr. Choi Kang,
Distinguished experts,
Ladies and gentlemen,

Last July in Seoul, I had the pleasure of addressing many of you at the Asan-SIPRI Conference on the Northeast Asia Peace and Cooperation Initiative, or NAPCI.

At that time, I told you that the Conference was the first meeting on NAPCI co-organized by a Korean institution and any foreign counterpart. It owed a lot to NATO Secretary General Rasmussen, who expressed wholehearted support for NAPCI, the first such blessing by the head of an international organization.

The good news is that we are now having such cooperation with our neighbors, as well as with other European organizations such as the EU and OSCE, whose experiences had inspired us in conceiving and formulating NAPCI.

Indeed, in the short span of eight months since our last meeting, we have been able to make meaningful progress. Senior government officials and experts from regional countries came together at the NAPCI Forum in Seoul to discuss concrete ways of turning our vision into reality. And just this week, representatives from the region – Korea, the U.S., Japan, China, Russia and Mongolia – met to focus on disaster management cooperation, another step forward for NAPCI.

In this sense, today’s Expert Roundtable, held in Brussels, is timely and significant. Brussels not only has the headquarters of NATO and the EU, but has become a symbol – of Europe, whole and free, turning the legacy of mistrust and historical antagonism into the strong mutual trust and integration of today’s Europe.

This has a meaningful lesson for Northeast Asia, suffering from what I call the ‘Asia Paradox.’ As UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has pointed out, our region is the only crucial missing link in terms of the UN’s cooperation with regional mechanisms.

And as we mark the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War this year, Europe’s lessons are even more relevant. The profound and daunting geopolitical challenges we face in East Asia and other parts of the world, demand that we must build up trust and strengthen cooperation in our region.

And indeed, this, in a nutshell, is the mission of NAPCI – to transform Northeast Asia from a region of mistrust and tensions into that of trust and cooperation. It is to achieve in the eastern part of Eurasia, what Europe achieved in its western part in the 20th century.

Later this week, I will host the Korea-Japan-China Trilateral Foreign Ministers’ Meeting, reconvened after about three years’ absence of dialogue due to bilateral tensions. As many items on the agenda are related to NAPCI, this meeting will also serve to give impetus to NAPCI, for the sake of peace and dialogue in Northeast Asia.

So, I sincerely hope that all of you present at today’s roundtable will be able to pull together your wisdom and experience, and thereby add further momentum to NAPCI.

I thank Dr. Ian Anthony, Dr. Choi, SIPRI and ASAN for organizing this great event, and wish each and every one of you great success in your noble endeavors.

Thank you.