Japan urges APEC flexibility in sensitive areas

Japan urges APEC flexibility in sensitive areas

CANBERRA (Reuter): Japan said yesterday November's APEC trade summit could give special treatment to sensitive economic sectors to win members' support for a plan to implement the group's free- trade pact.

Japanese Foreign Minister Yohei Kono said flexibility was needed in implementing the agreement, which would abolish trade barriers by the year 2010 for APEC's developed members and by the year 2020 for developing countries.

"Most of these countries have some sensitive areas and in addressing ourselves to these sensitive areas we would not exclude some consideration for some flexibility," he said after talks with Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans.

"We all just have to make a maximum effort so that our views, if different, will converge," he told reporters.

Australia is pushing for the November summit of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum leaders in the Japanese city of Osaka to agree on a blueprint for implementing the free-trade pact struck at last year's summit.

Yesterday, a Japanese official said that forcing a drastic trade liberalization plan on reluctant members could force some countries to quit the 18-member grouping.

Both ministers denied there was a split between Tokyo and Canberra over the blueprint to be drawn up at Osaka.

Evans said the APEC free-trade deal would fail if sectors were exempted, but added that implementation could be flexible.

"Once you accept the exemption of a whole sector from the commitments, then the whole process will fall apart," he said.

"Australia has not and will make no concessions on that front," Evans said.

Flexibility

"However, like the Japanese side...we do acknowledge that ...when one is talking about a timeframe from 1995 through to the year 2010, it is possible for there to be some flexibility on questions such as timing, phasing and so-on," he said.

"And that, no doubt, will be the subject of a lot of hard discussion in the period leading up to Osaka."

Kono said Tokyo was committed to allowing no exceptions -- as a principle. But flexibility was needed to win the support of all APEC members, he said.

He said there were some member countries, including Japan, making representations which called for flexibility in key sectors.

Japan is under pressure from farming groups not to allow further liberalization after concessions in the Uruguay Round of trade talks under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

Some APEC developing nation members have lobbied for concessions or exemptions in some sectors, mainly agriculture.

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

Evans and Kono are leading delegations of senior Japanese and Australian ministers for the latest in a series of regular talks of the Australia-Japan Ministerial Committee.

While APEC dominated talk at the meeting, the ministers also discussed regional security, French and Chinese nuclear test programs, trade access, bilateral trade and investment and other bilateral and regional issues.