Agenda of APEC ministerial meeting drafted
By Meidyatama Suryodiningrat
YOGYAKARTA (JP): Senior officials from the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum ended three days of meetings here yesterday by identifying issues to be discussed during November's APEC Ministerial Meeting in Jakarta.
The chairman of the third APEC Senior Officials Meeting (SOM), Wisber Loeis, said that a draft agenda for the November meeting had been completed and deliberated on, but that the SOM purposely decided not to adopt it in its final statement.
"It was my own idea that the SOM should not adopt the agenda," said Wisber who is director general of foreign economic relations at the Indonesian foreign ministry.
He defended his initiative by saying that Indonesia as chair of the 17-member forum reserves the right to set the agenda on its own.
Furthermore Wisber apparently did not want to "confront" Foreign Minister Ali Alatas with an agenda already adopted by the SOM.
He may have his own ideas for the agenda, Wisber said alluding to Alatas.
The current SOM is the third of four in the run-up to the sixth APEC Ministerial Meeting in Jakarta on Nov. 11-12. Unlike the previous two SOM's in Jakarta and Bali, delegates achieved a great deal of progress on a number of issues.
APEC groups the United States, Mexico, Japan, China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, Papua New Guinea, Canada and New Zealand along with members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) -- Thailand, Singapore, Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, and Indonesia.
A new face among the 320 delegates at this SOM was a Chilean delegate who attended as a guest. Chile will be formally admitted as the forum's 18th member at the APEC Ministerial Meeting.
Participation
During the SOM, delegates also discussed requests from Peru, Cambodia, Vietnam, Mongolia and Russia to participate in some APEC working groups.
Among the important results of the SOM was the transformation of the Ad-hoc Working Group on Economic Trends and Issues into a committee. This redeems the failure of the SOM last May when the proposed transformation failed to reach a consensus.
Delegates at the SOM also supported Indonesia's draft for a Ministerial Declaration on a Human Resources Development Framework.
Both these issues reportedly ranked high on the short list of elements to be contained in the Ministerial Joint Statement proposed by the SOM.
Other elements included in the proposed agenda are a ministerial commitment to support development of APEC cooperation in the area of infrastructure along with a recommendation for a forum on infrastructure cooperation.
"My preference is that I will report to the Indonesian minister who is going to chair the APEC Meeting," said Wisber of his decision not to adopt the proposed ministerial agenda.
Though it won't be adopted, Wisber noted that the SOM's proposals will be used by the ministers to establish the agenda of their meeting.
ASEAN
Responding to journalists' questions on the possible change of attitude by ASEAN in light of the members' active role in advancing the APEC process, Wisber stressed that ASEAN retained a cautious attitude towards the institutionalization of the forum.
"That adjective (cautious) will continue to be the general attitude of all ASEAN countries," he said.
Ever since the inaugural APEC Meeting in Canberra, Australia in 1989, ASEAN countries have remained adamant against institutionalizing the forum for fear of diluting the ASEAN cohesiveness.
During a meeting in Kuching, Malaysia in 1990, ASEAN ministers declared that APEC must remain an informal, consultative and loose cooperation forum.
"If you notice a change in attitude, well I would not blame you for having such a notion but I prefer to say that we continue to be cautious," Wisber added.