APEC leaders see need for fresh WTO round

By Amit Baruah

SHANGHAI, OCT. 17. The U.S. President, Mr. George W. Bush, arrives here tomorrow as Asia-Pacific Cooperation (APEC) Trade and Foreign Ministers took the view that the launch of a fresh WTO round of trade negotiations was essential to inject new life into a flagging world economy. It will be his first trip abroad since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Mr. Bush, in fact, comes two days in advance of the APEC Economic Leaders' meeting which is only scheduled to begin on Saturday.

It is clear that the American President, who will have his first- ever meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Mr. Jiang Zemin, wants to use the time before the summit to shore up his anti-terrorist coalition.

The Russian President, Mr. Vladimir Putin, will also arrive in Shanghai tomorrow. Interestingly, the Philippine and Indonesian Presidents, Ms. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and Ms. Megawati Sukarnoputri, will arrive only on Friday. In the time available to him, Mr. Bush is expected to hold hectic meetings with individual APEC leaders as he seeks sanction from the larger world community in the battle against terrorism.

His meeting with Mr. Jiang will be crucial - while Beijing has clearly said that it is opposed to terrorism of all kinds - no open-ended support to the American military strikes against Afghanistan has been forthcoming. China, as is well known, favours greater United Nations involvement in such actions.

In the meeting with Mr. Jiang, American concerns like missile proliferation and human rights are also expected to figure though it remains to be seen whether Washington chooses to stress these issues at a time when Beijing's support in the ``war'' against terrorism is important. Giving an account of the discussions at APEC Ministerial Meeting today, a Japanese official said there was a general meeting of minds that a new round of trade negotiations should be launched at the Fourth WTO Ministerial Meeting. ``All Ministers expressed their will to see a new round,'' the official said at a briefing today.

The official said Japan wanted anti-dumping, investment, trade and environment to be on the agenda for discussions when the new round was launched. The only reference to the concerns of developing countries was on the issue of ``capacity-building''.

It would appear that the APEC meeting has as its core offering the proposed ``launch'' of a new WTO round as it discusses the health of the global economy. With the developed world pushing hard on the issue, opposition to the launch of a new round before implementation issues flowing from the Uruguay Round are addressed seems to be thinning.

The Philippine Trade Secretary, Mr. Manuel Roxas, told The Hindu that Manila's position was that the agenda for future discussions must include the concerns of developing countries - including the gaps in implementation. Mr. Roxas said the mandated discussions on agriculture should commence as it was a commitment from the previous round.

``The general sense (among the Ministers on the new round) was that the Sept. 11 events (showed).... urgency for the economies to find common ground. ...it is important that there be a confluence of interests between the developed and developing countries in view of the slowdown in the world economy as further magnified by the Sept. 11 attacks,'' he said.

Mr. Roxas said a draft declaration on terrorism did not come up for discussions at the Ministerial Meeting today. He expected that the issue of terrorism would be taken up at the two-day summit meeting beginning on Saturday. ``They (the leaders) will be the ones to focus on security matters.''

Responding to reports that a reference to money- laundering had apparently been dropped from the draft declaration, Mr. Roxas said: ``That will be discussed at the leaders' summit....''

In his address at the Ministerial meeting, the Chinese Foreign Minister, Mr. Tang Jiaxuan, said: ``Currently, how to promote growth and restore confidence in the market is an issue on the top of our agenda... .we must also take up the challenge of enabling people from all sectors in the Asia-Pacific region to benefit from economic globalisation and the New Economy without widening development gaps between them.'' In a separate development, the Malaysian Trade Minister, Ms. Rafidah Aziz, has warned that the American military action could lead to the creation of more terrorists.

Ms. Aziz said: ``You wipe out one generation of terrorists, a new generation emerges. We all feel that terrorism should be eradicated, but it cannot be eradicated with the use of physical methods like bombing... .because terrorism is a state of mind,'' she said.

``Worst of all, those Afghan children whose parents have now died, they might out to be terrorists in future,'' she remarked.

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