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.