APEC take ssteps to free up world trade
APEC take ssteps to free up world trade
AUCKLAND (Reuters): Asia-Pacific leaders stepped up efforts to free up trade across half the world on Monday, announcing a package of proposals to remove tariffs barriers and make financial markets more efficient.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jenny Shipley stood before a line of 20 presidents, premiers and other national representatives and laid out measures which they hope will increase competition and prosperity of all their peoples.
Most of the final announcement of the annual Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit was in line with details of the written APEC communique leaked to Reuters and reported three days earlier but Shipley managed to come up with a few surprises.
Delivering what she called "the Auckland Challenge", Shipley said finance ministers had been instructed to work with other relevant organizations to develop banking standards for the region. She also said APEC leaders agreed to speed up efforts to eliminate non-tariff barriers to trade.
Speaking in the Maori court in Auckland's War Memorial Museum, Shipley said the Asia Pacific nations were committed to a new three-year round of global trade talks culminating in a single package and abolition of export subsidies.
The talks will begin in Seattle in November under the auspices of the World Trade Organization (WTO).
APEC members, representing $16 trillion in economic output, were committed to the launch of new round of global trade talks covering industrials, agriculture and services, Shipley said.
"We will strengthen our markets and improve the international framework governing trade and investment flows," she told the other 20 leaders, all male, dressed in identical black polo shirts and black yachting spray jackets.
Black is New Zealand's national sporting color.
Shipley, who faces the voters later this year, said the leaders also accepted the calls of the region's businesses that APEC be "more specific, transparent and comprehensive" about each members' plans to liberalize trade.
She also responded to demands that APEC pay more attention to the social needs of the region which groups some of the richest economies of the world, including the United States, Canada and Singapore, with some of the poorest such as Laos and Vietnam.
"Income and wealth disparities between and within economies can pose a challenge to social stability," Shipley warned.
The sentiments would have been welcomed by the demonstrators that have lined Auckland's hilly streets during the summit supporting causes ranging from China's Falun Gong spiritual movement to Kashmir. Protesters have accused APEC leaders of caring more about big business than the needs of ordinary people.
Ten thousand New Zealand Amnesty International supporters contributed their photographs to a 30-metre-long wall photo-mural saying "APEC leaders must put human rights first".
This year's APEC summit lacked the color of previous gatherings. The bright batik shirts and high-necked white silk smocks of former meetings were replaced by a drab "all black" costume and the organizers were unlucky with the weather which saw recent blue skies give way to sheeting spring rain.
Forced inside to stay dry, the leaders stood around glumly while Shipley made her speech.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was late and crept in quietly half-way through after being informed of bomb attack on a Moscow apartment block which killed at least 30 people.
The summit, which has strayed further and further from its original limited trade mission in recent years, saw a remarkable agreement on the political front.
Meeting on the sidelines of the summit in bilateral and in corridors, the leaders and their ministers forged a successful coalition to put pressure on Indonesia to allow a multi-national peacekeeping force to end the bloodshed in East Timor.
Details of the force that will seek to end the carnage that has swept the territory since it voted by 80 percent for independence last month have not yet been finalized but it is likely to consist of military from many of the 21 APEC members.
New Zealand Foreign Minister Don McKinnon said the world had to respond to the plight of the bloodied territory.
"World public opinion has turned in the last five or six days," he told Reuters Television in an interview.
"Two weeks ago, people thought that democracy in Jakarta was more important than the future of East Timor," he said. "In the last five days now, it is more important to get the East Timor problem solved."