Terrorism high in APEC agenda in Santiago

On the second day of his visit to Indonesia, Chilean President Ricardo Lagos Escobar gave a lecture on Thursday at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), met with the local business community and granted interviews to several journalists, including The Jakarta Post. He spoke on various issues, including trade relations between Chile and Indonesia and the upcoming annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in November, which will be hosted by the Chilean capital of Santiago. Following are excerpts from the question and answer session at CSIS and the interview.

Question: What are the main items on the APEC Summit agenda? Answer: The major items, of course, are the issues of security and trade. As far as trade is concerned, how can we improve trade negotiations now? I think our trade negotiations need to have a new follow-up and I would like to see if it is possible through the next APEC meeting.

Given the current situation in world affairs, (the APEC meeting will also discuss) the issues of terrorism and security: how to fight terrorism and how to increase security.

So terrorism will be a major item?

The major item on the APEC agenda is an economic one. But terrorists may affect the economy, may affect trade, may affect everything. I mean the world is different after September 11, 2001. It's difficult to have a meeting without talking about terrorism.

We already had a meeting in Chile on the issues of security and trade. The questions that arose during the meeting were: Are we going to increment the cost of trade because of security? Are we going to have a special device at our ports or airports in order to sell goods abroad? How are we going to be sure that containers contain what it is supposed to?

At the previous APEC meetings, participants were mostly economists and businesspeople, while the participation of non- governmental organizations was minimal. As a former socialist movement leader, what is your plan for the next APEC meeting in regards the participation of NGOs?

It is true that APEC meetings are normally attended by economists and businesspeople. I understand that more and more in this kind of meeting, some kind of participation must be given to the so-called non-governmental institutions, whatever they are.

You just met with the Indonesian business community. Did you offer them business opportunities in Chile?

Chile is trying to become a sort of bridge between Asian and Latin American countries. We are improving our ports, we are improving our infrastructure facilities, we are improving our telecommunication facilities. Therefore, we are in a position to offer our services in order to use Chile as a platform to other Latin American countries. Given the free trade agreements that Chile has, it is possible for Asian or Indonesian companies to expand their presence in Chile toward the rest of the Latin American countries.

You said that Indonesia and Chile can cooperate, among others, in gas. Could you elaborate on this?

You have a plenty of energy resources. You have agreed to provide gas to the west coast of the U.S.A. I think it's possible for you to also provide gas to the Latin American countries. The demand for energy in the region is quite substantial. We can also cooperate in the area of oil. Our state-owned oil company now has joint ventures in Ecuador and Egypt. Maybe, it's also possible to have joint ventures to explore and exploit oil reserves in Indonesia.

We talked yesterday (Wednesday) with the Coordinating Minister for the Economy (Dorodjatun Kuntjoro-Jakti) about these issues. Also, we talked about issues in the area of communications, the fact that most of our trade has to be done through Singapore and whether it is possible to have a direct connection between Chile and Indonesia. There was also a talk between Chilean Airline and Garuda on the possibility of extending the former's flights to Auckland and Sydney to Indonesia.