Politics comes before economics at APEC meeting

Politics comes before economics at APEC meeting

By Endy M. Bayuni

OSAKA, Japan (JP): Political and security issues come before economics at a gathering of the leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, although they are discussed on the sidelines, rather than in the forum proper.

The leaders held yesterday separate bilateral meetings on the eve of their annual summit, in which they are expected to endorse an ambitious action agenda to turn the Asia-Pacific into free trade zone by 2020 at the latest.

Despite declarations by their officials that APEC is strictly a forum of consultation on economic issues, most of the 18 APEC leaders arrived two days early, to use the opportunity to hold bilateral meetings in which politics, including security issues, feature prominently in the discussions.

Yesterday, President Soeharto of Indonesia held seven such meetings, most of them at the Westin Hotel, where he is staying for the three days of his Osaka visit.

He met with New Zealand Prime Minister Jim Bolger, Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating, Singapore Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, Japanese Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama, President Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon of Mexico, Koo Chen-fu (representative of the Taiwan president), and Brunei Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah.

Murayama, host of today's APEC summit, also held meetings with most of the leaders, reviewing the preparations for the conference and other political and security issues.

Security forum

Most APEC ministers, during the course of their meeting earlier this week, rejected a suggestion made by U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry to give APEC a security dimension.

Indonesian Minister of Foreign Affairs Ali Alatas dismissed the proposal out of hand, saying that regional security concerns are already addressed in another forum, the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), which involves 18 countries.

APEC, Alatas said on Friday, "was never designed to, and must never evolve into, something other than an economic consultative and cooperation body".

"The ARF is to develop a capacity for transparency, mutual confidence-building measures eventually for solving problems if we have them.

"So let's keep them separate (ARF and APEC), if we don't we may be mixing apples and pears and you won't get a good result," Alatas said.

Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen and Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans have also rejected Perry's idea.

Describing it as "an extreme complication at this stage", Evans said that APEC has worked as well as it has because its brief has wholly been focused on economic cooperation, trade and investment liberalization.

Japanese Foreign Minister Yohei Kono also said that the proper forum to discuss security concerns is the ARF.

Security of another kind is also the concern of the host nation, which has deployed more than 25,000 police officers for the APEC conferences, that began last week and reaches its climax with the leaders meeting this Sunday.

With 18 leaders in town, the authorities are sparing no efforts in ensuring their safety, putting up road blocks on roads leading to the New Otani, Westin and other hotels where the dignitaries are staying.

The 16th century Osaka Castle, the site where the APEC leaders will go for their "retreat" on Sunday, has also been closed to tourists and is heavily guarded.

Last night, Japanese Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama hosted an informal dinner for the 17 other APEC leaders.

Action Agenda

APEC's Action Agenda, to be endorsed today, sets out nine basic principles on trade liberalization and the steps that each members should pursue to reach that goal of free trade by the agreed deadline.

Fifteen areas have been earmarked for specific action in the agenda: tariffs, non-tariff measures, services, investment, standards and conformance, customs procedures, intellectual property rights, competition policy, government procurement, deregulation, rules of origin, dispute mediation, mobility of business people, implementation of the Uruguay Round outcomes, and information gathering and analysis.

APEC, founded in 1989 as a consultative forum, comprises Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and the United States.

This is the third time that APEC leaders meet. In Seattle, the United States, in 1993, they set out their vision of an Asia- Pacific community; in Bogor, Indonesia, the following year, they declared their intention to move to completely free their markets, setting a 2010 deadline for developed economies and 2020 for developing economies.