APEC vision and reality

It is easy to be cynical about the declaration Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation ministers signed in Bogor. After five years of talking, and a year after the Seattle "vision statement", the leaders of the 18 APEC nations have subscribed to a document which commits none of them to immediate action and whose expression of high hopes for "free and open trade and investment in Asia and the Pacific" are tentative and projected well into the next century.

The difficulties in the way of realizing these vague and distant goals might seem to make the exercise hopeless.

-- Sydney Morning Herald