ASEAN warns EU over issue at WTO talks

ASEAN warns EU over issue at WTO talks

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN (AP): Southeast Asian economic officials urged the European Union on Thursday to refrain from trying to include environmental and labor standards in trade talks or else doom the latest attempt by the World Trade Organization to launch a new global round of negotiations.

The appeal, coming during a dialogue that senior officials from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are holding among themselves and with trading partners over several days, continued the dispute between developing countries and the wealthy West that helped sink the WTO's efforts to start a new round of talks in Seattle in 1999.

This week's meetings are helping lay groundwork for a series of international gatherings, including one by ASEAN finance ministers in Hanoi next month, an ASEAN summit with China, Japan and South Korea in November in Brunei, and most importantly, a WTO gathering in Doha, Qatar, in November.

The Southeast Asians told the Europeans that applying environmental regulations to trade would hurt Asian companies. As examples, they cited EU directives against effluents discharged by foreign factories making electronic goods and a drive to label goods as ecologically sound. Southeast Asia's electronics manufacturing and timber industries could be hurt, the officials said.

Malaysia has said that any agenda for the WTO talks that fails to take the interests of poor nations into account will meet with the failure to launch a new round. The ASEAN officials will meet with counterparts from the U.S. Trade Representative's office Friday.

Meanwhile, Krirk Krai Jirapaet, permanent secretary for the Thai Commerce Ministry, said that Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia had failed to make progress over compensation issues stemming from Malaysia's demand to protect its domestic car industry from imports.