Australia to urge APEC members to push for WTO talks

November 9, 2000
Web posted at: 12:17 PM HKT (0417 GMT)

CANBERRA, Australia (Reuters) -- Australia will urge Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation members to renew the push for a new round of World Trade Organization talks when trade ministers meet in Brunei this weekend, Trade Minister Mark Vaile said on Thursday.

"APEC can make a real difference by building support for a new round of global trade negotiations as early as possible," Vaile said in a statement.

The APEC forum meeting of ministers runs from November 12-13 in the tiny sultanate of Brunei, with leaders taking over for the summit on November 15-16.

Analysts have said the APEC grouping is increasingly overshadowed by the WTO and mushrooming regional trading blocs in Europe and the Americas.

The importance of the Brunei summit has also been diminished because many of the leaders, like outgoing U.S. President Bill Clinton, are either lame-duck leaders or fighting for political survival, and thus carrying less political weight to the summit.

But Vaile said the regional forum remains "incredibly important to Australia" as a tool to help push for a multilateral trade round of WTO talks -- rather than narrower talks as advocated by some countries.

"I would expect that the APEC economies and the APEC leaders will next week call for renewed energy to launch a new round of multilateral trade negotiations," Vaile told reporters.

Vaile dismissed the suggestion this year's meet was shaping up as just a place for a pleasant chat between politicians.

"I think that that's a fairly unkind comment in terms of the sorts of things that have been achieved within APEC. It provides a forum for leaders...to work together and provides an opportunity for like-minded countries to pursue better economic outcomes for their economies," he said.

First established as a loose 12-member forum in 1989 to promote open markets and globalisation, APEC has been a catalyst to removing trade barriers on a wide range of goods in the region, and has expanded to 21 members.

Now grouping the United States, Japan, Russia and Canada, the other big economies around the Pacific and a number of the minor ones, APEC accounts for 60 percent of global gross domestic product and 45 percent of world trade.

APEC's landmark target, agreed in Bogor, Indonesia in 1994, is to establish free trade and investment in the region -- by 2010 for developed member economies and 2020 for developing ones.

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