Clinton calms fears on Asian crisis

Clinton calms fears on Asian crisis

By Meidyatama Suryodiningrat

VANCOUVER, Canada (JP): Ahead of a meeting of 18 leaders of
the Asia Pacific, United States President Bill Clinton led the
way in calming fears over Asia's economic crisis, confidently
describing them as "little glitches" that can be worked out.

"I think this is a time for confidence in the future of Asia
and confidence in the future of our relationship with them,"
Clinton said here Sunday local time.

"We have a few little glitches in the road here. We're working
through them," he added.

Clinton is in Canada's third largest city to attend a leaders
meeting of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC).

APEC comprises Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong
Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New
Guinea, the Philippines, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand
and the United States.

The forum aims to establish comprehensive trade and investment
liberalization by 2010 for developing countries and 2020 for
developing ones.

This year's meeting comes amid a financial crisis which has
hit Southeast Asian countries and spread to South Korea last
week.

On Friday, South Korea joined Thailand and Indonesia in
calling for emergency assistance from the International Monetary
Fund (IMF).

Even as Clinton was downplaying the Asian crisis, reports were
filtering in that Japan's fourth largest brokerage, Yamaichi
Securities, had collapsed.

Clinton signaled that the leaders in their two-day meeting
which begins Monday (today local time), will likely reaffirm
their support for the results of a meeting of 14 APEC finance
ministers from Nov. 18 to Nov. 19 in Manila.

Clinton noted that the IMF should take the lead in these
efforts with the support of developed countries whose role he
described as a "backup stabilizing reassurance support".

But he stressed that the afflicted economies themselves must
undertake "responsible policies that inspire investor
confidence".

Speaking after a bilateral meeting with Clinton, Canadian
Prime Minister Jean Chretien expressed similar confidence.

"We believe that Asia Pacific countries are not facing a
massive recession ... These countries are still growing," he
said.

Chretien defended the governments of the countries hit by the
crisis saying that the situation was "not necessarily" their
fault.

"It was a lot of people borrowing short-term money to build
hotels and office buildings and so on. And suddenly, with the
speculation, they're trapped," he argued.

Fred Bergsten, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Treasury
for International Affairs, said the APEC leaders meeting can be
considered a "finance summit" to help calm the financial
turbulence threatening markets throughout the region.

Speaking at a meeting of top business executives here,
Bergsten suggested that the leaders launch a new regional
arrangement to reinforce efforts by the IMF to help prevent a
future monetary crisis.

"The IMF did its job in foreseeing and warning of the
impending problem. The systematic difficulty was that Thailand
balked and no one pressed it to act," Bergsten said, adding that
the best means would be peer pressure because they would be
effected by the fallout of the crisis.

APEC leaders must reach some sort of agreement on liberalizing
their financial services sector.

"Every crisis in the region, ranging from Japan and Korea in
Northeast Asia, to Thailand and Indonesia in Southeast Asia, was
caused primarily by the weakness of national banking and
financial systems," said Bergsten who formerly headed the APEC
Eminent Persons Group.

"Reform of those systems ... is an essential element in the
restoration of confidence in the currencies and economies of
every one of these countries," he added.

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