ASEAN fears U.S.-Japan farm rift at APEC
ASEAN fears U.S.-Japan farm rift at APEC
By Bill Tarrant
KUALA LUMPUR (Reuter): The rapidly growing nations of Southeast Asia fear a battle over farm protectionism could cause a serious rift at the APEC summit next week in Japan, analysts and diplomats say.
Singapore Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong said in remarks published this week that the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum may weaken and eventually collapse if the Osaka summit fails to include farm trade in its free trade plan.
He told the Japanese Mainichi Shimbun Japan must be bold enough to open up all sectors of its economy to free trade.
"And if Japan shows leadership in Osaka, I believe other countries, which are hesitating now, would turn around," he said.
At their annual summit, leaders of the 18-member APEC forum plan to adopt a blueprint for scrapping barriers to regional trade and investment by the year 2020.
APEC, founded in 1989, 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.
The United States and Australia insist no sectors be excluded from the plan. Japan, China, South Korea and Taiwan want special treatment for their sensitive farm trade sectors.
The seven-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), with a population of more than 400 million -- larger than Europe's -- represents the biggest grouping within APEC.
They are among the world's biggest producers of commodities such as rubber, edible oils, tin and spices and generally support anti-protectionist measures in agriculture.
In Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Singapore, ASEAN boasts some of the world's fastest growing economies. Indonesia has the world's fourth largest population. Tiny Brunei has one of the biggest per capita incomes. And the former sick man of ASEAN, the Philippines, is rapidly recovering.
With big debt exposure to the dollar and yen, and economies heavily reliant on Japanese and American foreign investment, Southeast Asia shudders at another trade conflict between Tokyo and Washington over agriculture, analysts said.
"Asean is concerned," said Al Alim of Malaysia's Institute of Strategic and International Studies, who has worked with APEC's Eminent Persons group. "The differences between the United States and Japan are already vast."
ASEAN has no big issues of its own to press at the annual meetings which begin on Nov. 16, diplomats said.
APEC's resident skeptic, Malaysian Prime Minister Mohamad Mahathir, and his outspoken International Trade and Industry minister, Rafidah Aziz, plan to fight moves to turn APEC into a trade bloc.
"We do not want APEC to be a negotiating forum," Rafidah told reporters last week.
"No way will we allow the APEC process...to start negotiating trade-offs in liberalization or to have negotiations on tariff cuts and demand reciprocity, for example. We've already made our commitments in the Uruguay round."
ASEAN, in fact, aims to establish a free trade area of its own by the year 2003, far ahead of the APEC timetable. By then, the group plans to add Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar as members and could boast of having the world's largest free-trade area.
Founded in 1967 at the height of the war in Indochina, when U.S. policymakers believed Southeast Asian nations would fall like dominoes to an insurgent communist movement, ASEAN has seized upon economic liberalization as its new focus.
Alim said some fear that APEC could sap the group's identity and vitality.
"There is an undercurrent of feeling that ASEAN is becoming subservient to APEC. ASEAN has been around a long time and has been successful.