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."