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.