SE Asian ministers back EU call for WTO round

SE Asian ministers back EU call for WTO round

BANGKOK (Agencies): Southeast Asian economic ministers on
Friday threw their weight behind the European Union's call for a
new round at the World Trade Organization (WTO) with more
emphasis on the problems faced by the developing world.

"The ministers supported the launch, at the earliest
opportunity, of a new round of WTO trade negotiations and agreed
for the need for a broad and balanced agenda reflecting the
interests of all WTO members, particularly the developing
countries," said a joint statement issued by the ASEAN economic
ministers and EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy.

The EU was invited for the first time to attend the 32nd
annual economic ministers meeting of the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN) which was held this year in Chiang Mai,
northern Thailand which concluded on Friday.

The ASEAN ministers raised several of their concerns with the
EU, such as how its membership expansion may effect the E.U's
agricultural reforms, and means for intensifying economic
cooperation between the two blocs.

In particular, ASEAN backed the EU's call for a new round of
WTO trade talks, stalled since the failed talks in Seattle last
December.

Thai Commerce Minister Supachai Panickpakdi, who chaired the
ASEAN-EU meeting Friday, noted that the EU's "strong agenda" for
the next round of WTO talks "comes close to the agenda of the
developing countries in general".

The ministers noted that ASEAN-EU trade had reached US$89.9
billion in 1999.

Despite the calls for intensifying ASEAN-EU economic
cooperation, Lamy noted that the EU foreign ministers had yet to
decide whether they will go ahead with a planned ASEAN-EU
ministerial meeting in Vientiane, Laos, in December.

He told a press conference that the EU was still pondering
whether to cancel attendance at Vientiane in protest against
Myanmar's recent crackdown on opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

The ASEAN-EU joint consultative committee parley has been
derailed since 1997 amid ASEAN insistence that Myanmar
participate, and the EU's refusal to sit at the same table with
the pariah regime.

Earlier this year the EU agreed to go ahead with the meeting,
with Myanmar on board, after slapping more sanctions on the
junta.

But the crackdown on Suu Kyi and her National League for
Democracy (NLD) followers in August and September, after they
tried to leave the capital, has made the EU reconsider.

"It's premature to say whether we will go," said Lamy.

EU officials said the meeting was actually likely to go ahead,
although the Europeans hoped to use their attendance to put
pressure on Myanmar to lift restrictions on Suu Kyi who has been
under virtual house arrest since September 22.

Lamy also said ASEAN should not be compared to the European
Union.

"We should refrain from any sort of comparison because the
parameters are extraordinarily different," he told reporters on
the sides of the ASEAN economic ministers meeting in this
northern Thai city.

"We started this (EU process) 50 years ago under very specific
conditions ... For the sake of discussions, let's take the
European Union as it was like ASEAN 10-15 years (ago) -- some
sort of an idea that regional groupings were meaningful in
tomorrow's world," he said.

"So we should not benchmark ASEAN vis-a-vis the European Union
because 50 years of history has changed things totally."

But he said a common thread between the two groups was the
desire to integrate "given that we are in a market where economy
size is one of the key rules of the game."