APEC summit to pledge increased Net access

APEC summit to pledge increased Net access

TOKYO (Reuters): Leaders of the Asia-Pacific are set to pledge
next week that every person in the region should have access to
the Internet by the year 2010, Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper
said on Wednesday.

The group plans to double or even triple the number of people
in the region who have Internet access by 2005, according to the
draft of a declaration to be adopted at the Nov. 15-16 Asia
Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Brunei, it said.

One focus of the summit will be how to strengthen the economic
systems of each APEC member to cope with the information
technology (IT) revolution, the newspaper said, quoting the
draft.

APEC leaders are particularly concerned about the digital
divide between countries that are IT-capable and those that are
not, with its members stretched geographically from Russia to
Chile and economically from Third World Papua New Guinea to Japan
and the United States.

To narrow that gap, they are considering setting up local
Internet centers, even in thinly populated areas of developing
countries, to expand the number of people in the region with
access to the worldwide web.

This will be the first time that IT issues have been placed on
the agenda for APEC, where discussion usually focuses on
liberalization of trade and investments.

Information technology is currently a hot issue in Japan,
where a government panel on Monday drafted proposals aimed at
putting the country at the forefront of IT technology in five
years.

The draft also includes a call to resume a new round of global
free trade talks under the World Trade Organization (WTO) talks
next year, the Yomiuri said.

APEC groups Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong
Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New
Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, the Philippines, Russia,
Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, the United States and Vietnam.