JIIA Forum -- Presentation Summary
October 6, 2011
Venue: Ascot Hall, Hotel Okura

Karel Schwarzenberg
First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic“Cooperation between the Czech Republic and Japan in the Asia-PacificRegion”

The richly diverse Asia-Pacific region has garnered the interest of countries around theworld in recent years as the region seeing the most dynamic development. At the sametime, though, it is also a region confronted with a variety of problems: Afghanistan, Pakistan,
the Korean Peninsula, and the Taiwan Strait pose security issues and Myanmar and North
Korea human rights issues. China and India have drawn the attention of the international
community for their sustained economic development.

The Czech Republic has been among those endeavoring to strengthen its ties with theremarkably growing Asia-Pacific region, and it has undertaken to help resolve some of theproblems facing this region.

On the security front, for instance, the Czech Republic has

focused on the challenges posed by Afghanistan and North Korea.

We have dispatchedtroops and medical staff to Afghanistan to support national reconstruction, and we havetaken advantage of our relations with North Korea dating back to the days of socialism toprovide that country with a window to the outside world through personal exchange,education, and technical instruction.

Our assistance programs for Afghanistan, Vietnamand Mongolia are good examples of our developmental aid efforts.

Support for Mongolia

has been accorded particular importance, and we are contributing substantially to
Mongolia’s development through both financing and human resources development. Let
me also mention our human rights efforts in Myanmar.

The Czech Republic is maintaining

close contact with the leaders of the democratization movement even as it supports thedemocratization of Myanmar through other means, such as funding for independent media
and humanitarian aid for refugees. In addressing such issues, collaboration with Japanand South Korea, major countries in the region, is essential, and the Czech Republic would
like to strengthen its ties with Japan in future.

Our relations with Japan have become markedly closer in the economic, political and evencultural realms.

The Czech Republic has been the recipient of significant direct investment

from Japan and has become an important partner for Japan in Central Europe.

Japan’sunique culture, history and peace policies have attracted the interest of a broad swath of theCzech public.

Japan has taken particular note of the potential of the Czech Republic andthe other countries of the Central European Visegrád Group (Hungary, Poland, Slovakia)
and, prompted by the Japanese prime minister’s August 2003 visit to the Czech Republicand Poland, has deepened cooperation in a number of areas: politics, economics, culture
and tourism.

Establishing platforms for dialogue between countries is vital for regional stability.
platforms are useful for overcoming historical frictions and disputes.

SuchEurope has a numberof regional cooperation organizations, and I would like to briefly discuss one in which theCzech Republic is participating: the four-member Visegrád Group (Czech Republic, Hungary,Poland, and Slovakia).
The Visegrád Group is celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2011, and in July of this year theCzech Republic assumed the Group’s rotating presidency.

The Visegrád Group wasfounded to curb the disruptions arising from systemic transition and improve the status ofGroup countries within Europe, to eliminate historical frictions between the member states,
and to jointly undertaken negotiations on EU and NATO membership for the four countries.
Although Group activities did stagnate for a time in the latter half of the 1990s, the four
members all attained EU and NATO membership and the Group has effectively functioned
as a regional cooperation framework within the EU.

In recent years the Group has

collaborated with the EU on an assortment of issues ranging from military cooperation toacademic exchange, and the scope of Group activities has grown increasingly wide.

Thedynamism of Group efforts has boosted the status of the four members within the EU andhelped strengthen the EU itself.

The Group is also firming up its ties with the Benelux andBaltic countries and with other regional cooperation frameworks.

The experiences of thisVisegrád Group should provide hints on integration and democratization for other regions
around the world, above all the western Balkan countries neighboring the Czech Republic
and the countries belonging to the EU’s Eastern Partnership (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia,Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus).

In June 2011, the Visegrád Group launched the Visegrád 4 Eastern Partnership Program towork closely with the EU’s Eastern Partnership in supporting democratization andpolitical/economic reform in the Partnership countries.

Seeking to contribute to deeper

integration in Eastern Europe and to enhance the stability and prosperity of the European
continent as a whole, this approach is one of the Czech Republic’s highest-priority foreign
policy endeavors. The Czech Republic is actively engaged in promoting administrativereform in the Partnership countries (especially in Moldavia and Georgia) and in cultivatingand educating their civil societies.

The Visegrád Group framework serves as an effectivemeans of implementing these EU policies.

Japan lies outside the EU zone but, as one of the “friends group,” is enthusiastically involved
with the Eastern Partnership, principally in financial and technological matters.

Japan’s

participation has contributed greatly to expanding the areas enjoying freedom and prosperityin the eastern part of Europe.

The Visegrád Group welcomes Japan as a key cooperation

partner, and we hope in future to uncover new areas of cooperation within the Eastern
Partnership and to implement specific projects as soon as possible.