APEC back G-20 trade push

The Straits Times
Nov 20, 2008 | 10:05 AM
Apec back G-20 trade push

LIMA - FOREIGN ministers preparing a weekend Apec summit here agreed a global trade deal should be sealed as soon as possible and preferably by year's end in response to the world economic crisis, officials said on Wednesday.

The Doha round of trade talks, which hit a dead end in July, should be revived in line with the recommendations of the G-20 summit held in Washington last Saturday, foreign and trade ministers from the 21-nation Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum agreed.

'The time has come for the Doha round to be brought to a conclusion, and that I think is the main topic of conversation for Apec this week,' Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith told reporters after a meeting with his Apec counterparts.

He added that Apec heads of state and government were being urged at their meeting on Saturday and Sunday to 'direct trade ministers to meet before the end of the year in an effort to bring the Doha round to a successful conclusion'.

A Japanese government official said that at the ministerial meeting, 'all the economies supported the outcome of the G-20 summit in Washington' and shared the view that 'Apec is against protectionism'.

Leaders from the G-20 group of major developed and developing powers committed at the summit in Washington to counter the financial crisis by striving to 'reach agreement this year' on the Doha round of trade talks.

Several nations, including the United States, Japan, China and Russia, are members of both the G-20 - which includes the world's biggest industrialised and developing nations - and Apec.

In Washington, US President George W. Bush's advisor for international economic affairs Dan Price said Mr Bush would be supporting the G-20 declaration.

'I will say that certainly one of our priorities ... would seek to broaden the support for that declaration by having it endorsed by the other members of Apec,' he said.

The Doha-round talks failed at the World Trade Organisation headquarters in Geneva because of a disagreement between the United States and India over cotton.

Officials have described that obstacle as a narrow issue that, given the world financial crisis, should be resolved to allow a global trade deal to be reached.

'The urgent need for (a deal) is even more compelling now,' Mr Smith said.

The Apec summit was also expected to showcase the rising political might of the world's big emerging economies, which sat alongside the wealthy nations as equals at the G-20 summit.

Chinese President Hu Jintao, for instance, received great media attention and an airport honour guard as he arrived Wednesday ahead of the summit on the final leg of a trip to Latin America that has taken in Costa Rica and Cuba.

Japan's Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone pledged during the meeting with Apec counterparts that rich countries would look after the interests of developing countries also hit by the crisis.

'We are concerned the confusion on international financial markets, with the declines in global stocks and the liquidity crunch, could endanger funding for development, hurting poor people,' he said.

'Despite the tough circumstances, we shouldn't retreat from our present support for development. Our country is determined to meet developing countries' expectations,' he said.

With trade the focus of the Apec gathering, many eyes are on Mr Bush, who is making his last scheduled trip abroad to attend.

Questions remain over how committed Mr Bush's successor, Mr Barack Obama, will be to any US decisions made at the Apec summit. Mr Obama does not take over the US presidency until January 20 next year.

Mr Bush's secretary of state, Ms Condoleezza Rice, was not able to make the foreign ministers' meeting in Lima on Wednesday.

A State Department spokesman said she was held up by unspecified 'issues and meetings' in Washington but was represented by an under secretary.

Mr Bush's presence was expected to stir protests, with Peru's main labour union, the Confederacion General de Trabajadores, threatening a demonstration against him on Friday.

Mr Mario Huaman, the union's secretary general, said the march was 'to condemn Bush's presence as he is guilty for the financial crisis, which is having a negative impact on workers'. Security, though, was heavy for the event.

Some 39,000 police were deployed in Lima and another 60,000 officers were on full alert across the rest of the country, which is still haunted by a bloody Maoist insurrection in the 1980s and 1990s. -- AFP