'Resist pressure on non-trade issues'

'Resist pressure on non-trade issues'

JAKARTA (JP): Indonesia asked fellow members of the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) yesterday to
resist the West's pressure to link environmental and human rights
issues with international trade talks.

The U.S. and western Europe have planned to discuss the "non-
trade" issues at the forthcoming World Trade Organization (WTO)
meeting in Singapore, scheduled for December.

When opening the two-day ASEAN Ministerial Meeting,
Indonesia's President Soeharto called on the seven ASEAN member
countries to consolidate their common position against the West's
insistence.

Soeharto stressed that the WTO meeting should not deviate from
world trade, as agreed upon at the Uruguay Round meeting in
Marrakesh in April 1994.

"We must express concern over the efforts of some developed
countries to sidetrack the deliberations ... so that the focus
will be on matters extraneous to trade," he noted.

Such efforts will not only denigrate the developing countries,
but also ultimately debilitate the WTO itself, Soeharto said.

ASEAN member countries see inclusion of human rights and
environmental issues in world trade talks as motivated by the
developed countries' protectionist policy and harmful to
developing countries exports.

The establishment of WTO in December last year as the
embodiment of the results of the Uruguay Round has raised the
hope that the world community would be able to rely on a
multilateral instrument that can regulate the global trading
system in a transparent, equitable and balanced fashion.

"But just because the WTO has been launched does not mean
that the inequities and imbalances of the world trade regime will
be automatically redressed," Soeharto noted.

The rules and regulations of the WTO have to be complied with
and its member countries must summon the political will to adhere
to its discipline, he added.

The President noted widening disparities and "unacceptable
inequities" that continue to undermine relations between
developing and industrialized countries while a large part of
humanity languishes in abject poverty.

Global population pressures and "reckless consumption
patterns" in developed countries continue to wreak havoc on the
environment, he said.

"These problems are global and systematic in nature and
therefore cannot be solved by any one nation or groups of
nations, no matter how powerful they are," he said.

Soeharto underlined the importance of stability in the Asia
Pacific rim to allow dialogs and cooperation in development.

Development is possible only if stability is prevalent so that
growth is possible. The economy grows, so there is more to be
shared and the fruits of development are shared equally, he
added. (pan)