Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is my honour to deliver these remarks on behalf of my President, Lennart Meri. He asked me to pass on to you his regrets at not being able to attend this event in person, since at the last moment a meeting with President Clinton came about, and he is, along with his two colleagues, meeting at this moment with President Clinton in Washington.

With that, I would turn to my president's remarks.

It is a great pleasure to stand before you here in the United States, a nation whose hard work and success serves as a tremendous inspiration to Estonia. My visit here is a testimony to the dramatic advances that my country has made over the past five years. In that short period, Estonia has become a stable, democratic country with opened markets and a small, but thriving economy, an accomplishment that speaks for itself. In light of that progress, I would like to talk to you about the bright future I see for my country.

Over the past forty years, Estonia has looked to the Unites States as a symbol of hope. Your country was one of the few to never officially recognise the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states, and this policy of non-recognition was a beacon of hope for us during the darkest days of Brezhnevian despair.

Now, although Estonia in once again independent, our eyes are still on America. We believe that with courage, dedication and determination, that rare combination of qualities that made America great, we, too, can achieve our full potential as a nation.

The success of our smart, open market reforms has given Estonia a certain compass reading that lends a strong sense of direction. We know what the future holds for us, and we are committed to making that vision a reality.

That means that even though we are small, we think big. We can see the day when our children grow up to be Nobel laureates, when the computer industry looks to an Estonian Bill Gates for inspiration and the label ''Made in Estonia'' commands the same respect as ''Made in the USA''.

We know that if we are to achieve our goals, we must rise to meet the challenges of the present. More than anyone else, we know that these challenges will be tough. That is why we have identified a few key priorities for the next few years.

We are focusing on full integration back into Europe, with all its political, economic and security aspects. Estonia already has a Europe Agreement with the European Union, and we are moving step-by-step toward full membership. We also have activised our participation in NATO's Partnership for Peace program as a means to eventual NATO membership.

We are also committed to becoming an international centre of trade, a place where business can set up shop and, once we are EU members, have access to one of the world's largest free trade zones. We are not only a gate way to the established markets of the West, but also to the emerging and enormous markets of the East.

We continue to expand our economy, and have one of the highest growth rates in Europe. We are putting Estonia's highly skilled labour force to work in a diverse range of industries, including those producing textiles, wood products, chemicals and electronics.

Finally, we are focusing on ushering Estonia into the Information Age. Nearly fifty percent of our secondary schools are already on the Internet and with a program we're calling the Tiger Leap, we hope to make that percentage one hundred by the year 2002. This accessability to the world of the ether is not limited to schools, either. In Estonia, this interest in computers is a grass-roots movement - Estonia is listed among the world's top twenty countries in Internet connections per capita. We are leapfrogging in the Information Age.

We are well on our way to making our vision a reality, but we cannot fully achieve our goals without your interest, participation and investment into my country. Combine this with your experience and knowledge, and you have a team that's hard to beat. As our economy grows, our role in Europe, and the world, becomes greater, encouraging further investment, and we enter into a mutually beneficial cycle.

Several months ago The Washington Post predicted that Estonia's economy would match that of its northern neighbours in less than 20 years. Two hundred and twenty years ago, your great nation started as an independent state, full of promise. Despite the enormous challenges you faced you saw your dreams come true.

In the first half of this century, Estonia enjoyed two decades of prosperous freedom. So, although Estonia is not a new nation, it is, in a sense, a young nation full of hope. And we too shall see our dreams come true. We invite you to invest in a brilliant future, both yours and Estonia's.

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