During the meeting, senior government officials, businessmen and experts from the educational and academic communities from the 21 APEC members exchanged ideas and experiences in human resources development and explored new ways to enhance cooperation in the field.

Chinese President Jiang Zemin and the Sultan of Brunei delivered important speeches at the opening ceremony.

The meeting formulated the Beijing Initiative on APEC Human Capacity Building.

Addressing the closing ceremony, Chinese vice-premier Qian Qichen hailed the meeting as a success and the first of its kind in the history of APEC. The offers APEC members a chance to discuss a key development issue as mankind enters the new century, and is an important meeting in preparation for the APEC informal leaders' meeting slated for Shanghai this October.

"The meeting has been crowned with success. It not only epitomizes the APEC purposes of equality and consensus, but also embodies the spirit of the times characterized by the extensive cooperation and innovative development of the APEC members in the new century," he said.

"Though brief, the meeting is of great and far-reaching significance and will no doubt add an important page to the annals of APEC," he added.

The vice-premier extended "warm congratulations on the success of the meeting and the achievements it has scored" on behalf of the Chinese government.

Qian congratulated the meeting for having explored the new idea about and identified the direction and priority in human resources development and cooperation, and for having set up a new mechanism for APEC cooperation in this regard.

He expressed the hope that APEC members will "carry forward the spirit of cooperation and innovation and make long-term unremitting efforts to turn this meeting's consensus on the objectives of human capacity building into reality, the strategic option into strategic action and the tripartite cooperative relationship into a long-term and regular operating mechanism."

Qian reiterated that as it is entering a new period of the modernization drive, China values peace and seeks development and wishes to have more extensive exchanges and cooperation with the international community, especially the Asia-Pacific region.

"The ninth APEC Informal Leader's Meeting and other meetings will provide a rare opportunity for us to make friends, step up cooperation and serve the economic development of Asia and the

Pacific," he said.

"The Chinese government and people from all walks of life in China are working wholeheartedly in preparation for the smooth convocation of the meeting," he stressed.

(Xinhua 05/16/2001)