warmes hanks to Justin Staples and his staff for their
splendid arrangements and for the warmth of their welcome.
I am glad, too, that we have such a complete turn
treim
تر
----
out of Heads of Mission from South East Asia itself we've lost
only one, I think, to his well-earned mid-tour leave, and
are delighted to welcome his Number 2, Juliet Collings.
It's good that we have both Chargé and Ambassador-desigate
en route to, Hanoi. And I'm particularly glad that we are
to have the benefit of expert opinions from quarters in
the Far East which have so powerful an influence on
and interest in what happens in the South East Asian region.
I mentioned that it's all but three years since the last
conference of this kind. One of the things I hope we can
do over the next 48 hours is to consider in what ways the
regional scene and its wider environment have changed during
that time; in the hope that this may help us in our
efforts to forecast the shape at least of the next 5 years
changes
or so. If I might suggest two that strike us very much
in London, there is on the one hand a perceptible growth
of ASEAN's collective self-confidence and on the other the
unexpected persistence of recession, which at last seems
to have caught up with even the strongest of the regional
economies. I'm not sure that our predecessors. in 1980
would have predicted the latter and I know they were none
too confident of the former.
/I have