Copenhagen gears up for ASEM summit
Copenhagen gears up for ASEM summit
Robert Wielaard, Associated Press, Brussels
Twenty-five European Union (EU) and Asian leaders open a two-day summit known as Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) in Copenhagen on Monday to discuss the fight against terrorism, American pressure for a war against Iraq and the tough road to a global trade agreement by 2005.
The leaders will stress the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks against New York and Washington was no "clash of cultures" between Islam and the West.
They will agree to work "closely together to combat the terrorist threat to global peace," Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the meeting host, said in an interview published Friday in the English-language weekly Copenhagen Post.
The summit is the fourth since 1996 when European and Asian leaders agreed to foster closer ties to rival America's trade and political links with Asia.
The leaders of Japan, China, South Korea and seven members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations - Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam - are to meet among themselves on Sunday.
On Monday, the leaders of the 15 EU nations - Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Austria - join them for two days of talks.
EU officials say they have steadily improved relations with Asia. They cite cooperative programs - from illegal immigration to child welfare, from human rights to environmental protection - a fast maturing political dialogue and two-way trade that surged to nearly 361 billion euros (dollars) in 2001, up 40 percent from 1997 when a financial crisis swept Asian nations.
Last year, Asia accounted for 20 percent of EU exports. And EU markets matter greatly to Asia, whose trade surplus with Western Europe rose from US$28.5 billion in 1995 to $122 billion in 2000.
In the political realm, the EU claims some credit for guiding the two Koreas toward reconciliation and for helping East Timor win independence from Indonesia.
They will also likely hail agreement by North Korea and Japan to discuss forging diplomatic ties after leaders from the two countries issued mutual apologies for mistakes that prompted decades of strained relations at a summit this week.
The EU and Asian leaders will likely discuss U.S. pressure for a war against Iraq, which the United States claims is developing weapons of mass destruction. Wary of charges in Muslim countries that another Iraq war will prove the West is on an anti-Islam crusade, the EU side will pursue "a fresh angle" in the war on terrorism debate.
An EU-drafted, pre-summit paper states that debate must focus on "how Asia and Europe might cooperate in dealing with the consequences" of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The leaders will also discuss security in their respective areas.
The Copenhagen summit will also debate the difficult negotiations for a new global trade agreement by 2005. "The negotiations are not going as fast as we would like," a senior EU official who asked not to be named, said ahead of the summit.
Some Southeast Asian nations, especially Singapore, want the EU to sign bilateral free trade accords. The Europeans reject that for fear of accentuating already vast economic differences in Asia and wants Asian nations to develop closer economic ties with one another.