APEC talks extended for lack of progress

APEC talks extended for lack of progress

TOKYO (AFP): The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC)
forum has extended talks for a third day after failing to make
progress on preparing a free-trade plan during two days of talks,
a Japanese official said yesterday.

"Members haven't reached agreement in four or five different
areas. The situation is not yet solid," he said, referring to the
25-year "action agenda" which is supposed to be adopted at next
month's summit in Osaka.

The official said progress towards the summit was only 80
percent complete, the same description used by Japanese officials
at the end of last month's meeting in Hong Kong when Japan,
China, South Korea and Taiwan fell out with the other members
over plans to seek different treatment for sensitive sectors.

"We didn't spend as much time on confrontation as we did in
Hong Kong," the official was quoted by AFP as saying. "Japan and
South Korea had some complaints. But there's no change in the
picture of the confrontation."

Agricultural exporters, notably Australia but also the United
States and New Zealand, have asserted that an action agenda with
different treatment for sensitive sectors would undermine the
push towards free trade in the region.

Australia

Australian Trade Minister Bob McMullan, visiting South Korea
ahead of next month's APEC leaders' summit in Japan, said in
Seoul yesterday that it was "crucially important" that sensitive
areas such as agriculture not be exempted from the free-trade
pact.

"The inevitable outcome of one member being allowed to take
its sensitive sectors off the table is that others will follow
suit," McMullan said in a speech to business people in Seoul. A
copy of the speech was released in Canberra.

Leaders from the 18-member Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation
(APEC) forum are due to meet in Osaka next month to decide how to
implement a deal to axe trade barriers, struck at last year's
summit in the Indonesian city of Bogor.

But facing domestic political pressures, summit host Japan has
announced it wanted special treatment for agriculture. Japan has
backing from China, South Korea and Taiwan and the issue
threatens to be a major obstacle to consensus at Osaka.

McMullan said free trade in all sectors would help all APEC
members. "We need to maintain the momentum for trade
liberalization in the Asia-Pacific region," he said.

"It is overwhelmingly in all our interests -- and clearly in
Korea's interest -- that we not weaken the Bogor commitment to
free trade in the region," he said.

"Such a result would substantially reduce the scope of trade
and investment liberalization within APEC and weaken the
liberalization process regionally and globally."

McMullan's warning came as Australia's ambassador to Tokyo,
Ashton Calvert, publicly criticized Japan's efforts to exempt
agriculture.

"If it falls back because of some domestic sectoral pressures,
then it will fail in its role as APEC chair and a lot of other
things will fall out of the grasp of APEC," Calvert, a former
senior advisor to Prime Minister Paul Keating, told Tuesday's
Australian Financial Review newspaper.

"Every country would quite legitimately expect to nominate
their own sensitive sector and the whole thing would unravel.
"They risk wrecking APEC."

Under APEC's free-trade plan, developed nations would abolish
trade barriers by 2010 and developing nations by 2020.

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