APEC shake hands on trade, flu, terror

APEC shake hands on trade, flu, terror

Burt Herman, Associated Press, Busan, South Korea

Asia-Pacific leaders including U.S. President George W. Bush,
China's Hu Jintao and Indonesia's Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono sought
to breathe life into stalled global trade negotiations at an
annual summit Saturday with a statement calling for a
breakthrough in a stalemate with Europe over agricultural
subsidies.

Wrapping up their annual summit, the 21 leaders of the Asia-
Pacific Economic Cooperation forum also promised to boost
cooperation on fighting terrorism and preparing for a possible
flu pandemic.

They urged that further progress be made at international
talks seeking to convince North Korea to abandon its nuclear
weapons ambitions.

"The North Korean nuclear issue is a factor of security
anxiety not just for South and North Korea, but also a factor of
anxiety that affects the whole of Northeast Asia," South Korean
President Roh Moo-hyun told journalists after the meeting. If the
standoff is resolved, Roh said, peace and economic cooperation
would expand between the Koreas and spread the region.

The trade issue dominated the two-day APEC summit, which
occurred three weeks before a key World Trade Organization
meeting in Hong Kong.

The leaders, who clearly identified Europe as responsible for
the deadlock on the sidelines of APEC, stopped short of naming
the continent in their statement on the trade talks. Officials
said it was too politically sensitive to do so.

"We urge all other WTO members, and especially those that have
the largest stake in the global trading system and derive the
biggest benefits therefrom, to show the flexibilities needed to
move the negotiations forward," the leaders said.

They said "significant progress must be made" in Hong Kong to
advance the WTO's so-called Doha round.

Counterterrorism, bird flu, energy security and other issues
were dealt with in a separate statement adopted in a cupcake-
shaped villa on the South Korean coast named Nurimaru, or
"pinnacle of the world." The agreements were announced after the
leaders posed for a photo in traditional South Korean silk
overcoats called durumagi.

Fears of a possible human pandemic spawned by bird flu have
grown in recent days with China announcing its first human cases.
Under a new bird flu initiative, APEC countries committed to
openness and information sharing, and said they would conduct a
simulation exercise early next year to test responses to a
possible pandemic.

APEC's bird flu plan "commits our economies to effective
surveillance, transparency and openness, and close domestic,
regional and international coordination and collaboration," the
leaders' statement said.

Condemning terrorism, the leaders said they would seek to
dismantle terrorist groups and counter threats from weapons of
mass destruction.

They also launched an initiative to protect intellectual
property, seeking to stem counterfeit goods and software piracy,
and said they would find ways to offset the effects of high oil
prices.

About 1,000 anti-globalization protesters attempted to march
to the meeting venue, but were blocked by security forces and
dispersed peacefully after several hours. On Friday, police
clashed with activists from a crowd of about 4,000 protesters who
failed to disrupt the meeting.

The leaders said Saturday that the WTO's Doha round "must be
carried to a successful conclusion ... by the end of 2006."

Unblocking disputes over agriculture are the key, without
which "we cannot make progress in the round as a whole," the
leaders' statement said. "Avoiding or compromising our ambition
on this issue would mean that we would lower expectations for the
round as a whole."

Australia and Canada wanted the statement to name Europe as
the main obstacle in the WTO, but other leaders objected because
they didn't want to single out any country or region for
criticism, officials said.

"You don't have to name names, it's quite obvious who are the
people" the statement will be directed at, Philippine Foreign
Secretary Alberto Romulo told The Associated Press.