Japan and Australia on 'same wavelength'

Japan and Australia on 'same wavelength'

TOKYO (AFP): Australia and Japan were "very much on the same wavelength" in seeking a positive outcome to next month's summit of APEC leaders in Indonesia, Australia's Foreign Minister Gareth Evans said yesterday.

Evans had earlier reportedly been told by Japan's international trade and industry minister, Ryutaro Hashimoto, that Tokyo would support the goal of free trade between members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum by 2020.

"The government is coordinating its views towards supporting the goal," Japanese news agencies quoted Hashimoto as saying.

The Australian foreign minister, speaking at a news conference after talks with Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama, said: "What we need at the forthcoming APEC meeting is two things."

Evans said the first priority was "very solid progress on the mainstream APEC agenda" of regional economic cooperation, especially in the area of trade facilitation issues such as investment guidelines and standards certification.

"We want substantial movement on those fronts as part of the process of consolidating APEC," he said.

"Beyond that, secondly, we need and want to be looking for a significant political declaration on the subject of free trade in the Pacific by a reasonably early date in the 21st century on a GATT-consistent basis," he said, adding that details could be worked out over the next year or two.

"Australia and Japan are very much on the same wavelength when it comes to those aspirations for the APEC meeting," he said. "We both believe they're realizable, although it won't be without a degree of difficulty bedding it all down between now and then and at the time."

Negotiations

Evans said Australia was seeking to establish January next year as the "firm start-up date" for negotiations on the eventual free-trade area.

"We'd certainly like, other things being equal, to have an agreed standstill in terms of tariff rates operating from that date," he added.

The deadline of 2020 for implementation is "very much an outside date but one that we could live with if it came to that."

Evans said there was a "reasonable chance" of Japanese support for such a timetable at next month's summit "provided it's left to be resolved just what precisely happens thereafter."

Issues

Subsequent issues to be addressed include the "treatment of particular sectors, and the speeds at which particular countries and particular sectors will be bound by whatever tariff reduction regime is eventually agreed."

"We don't expect anything much more than the first step to be taken in November and most of the issues of most sensitivity here in Japan are ones that can be left for a much more detailed discussion at a later stage," he said.

Evans said he told Hashimoto that at least four broad areas would have to be examined after the APEC leaders issue their declaration, namely product coverage, policy coverage, timing, and the treatment of outsiders.

"These are big complex policy issues that are going to have to be addressed," he said. "It's clearly going to take some time even to negotiate the framework for the implementation of the declaration, quite apart from what sort of a detailed tariff- reduction regime, which might follow on thereafter."

Evans said Japan was "on the same wavelength provided that it's made clear that we're not pre-empting the discussion of all those other policy areas."

APEC, set up in 1989, groups Australia, Brunei, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and the United States. Chile is set to become the 18th member at next month's meeting.