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.