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.