Philippines would provide a perfect opportunity for showing to Asia and rest of the world the bright future of women's issues in Asia.

The last three years in which we have discussed the women's issues at the Asian Parliamentarians' Meeting on Population and Development have been a very important period for the issue of population and development. In 1994, International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) was held to determine how to address the population and development issues of respective countries for the next 20 years and was proceeded by the World Summit on Social Development (WSSD) in March 1 995 and the Fourth Women Conference on Women (FWCW) in September of the same year.

In conjunction with these inter-governmental meetings, AFPPD called out to regional federations of parliamentarians throughout the world to convene parliamentarians' meetings in their respective regions. We have learned that the enthusiasm of Asian parliamentarians regarding the population problem has won respect from the entire world. It was of great honor that, in cooperation with the AFPPD Secretariat, APDA was able to cooperate in its limited capacity to initiate these meetings. were held mainly under agendas such as

Consistent throughout these meetings, which "Reproductive Health and Rights," "Empowerment of Women" and "Improvement of Women's Status," was a notion that "Women are at the subject, not the object, of the population problem. The population problem cannot possibly be solved without solving the women's issues. "

As we have started our discussions about the women's issues before the Cairo Conference, we take pride in having taken our action in such timely manner.

Many discussions have taken place. Now is the time to carry them out.

What we are going to discuss this year under the working title of the Manila Proposal has been prepared in view of the results of inter-governmental meetings and parliamentarians' meetings that have been held up to now, and is intended to serve as a material used during your review. Following a full discussion, I believe that it will be adopted as the Manila Proposal, proposed to your respective governments through your hand, and serve as a steady step towards solution of women and population issues.

We have also scheduled in the afternoon of the second day a roundtable discussion for discussing Asia's strategy in preparation for the World Food Summit which will be held in Rome by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in November of this year.

As the decision to hold this roundtable discussion was made at the last minute, the preparations may be incomplete. However, I hope that it would provide an opportunity for you to freely discuss Asia's strategy with regard to the issues of security and sustainable development of Food and Population.

As the schedule is rather tight, I would like to conclude my address by requesting your lively discussion and hoping that this conference will prove fruitful for us all. Thank you.