Economic and foreign ministers from 21 Pacific Rim economies agreed yesterday on the need for a new round of global trade talks under the umbrella of the World Trade Organization (WTO), but the devil was in the details.
Officials attending the two-day ministerial meeting of APEC said that despite general support for a fresh round of WTO trade talks during the meeting, the 21-member grouping remained split over whether to specify 2001 as a target to get the world trade talks going.
"The controversy is about timing," Steve Chen (
While some countries voiced their strong support to get the multilateral trade talks started next year, others said any specific indication of the timing was improper.
"Many of the delegations agreed ... that the negotiations could be launched during 2001," said Australian Trade Minister Mark Vaile.
Taiwanese officials also admitted that the US had expressed its strong support for a fresh round of WTO trade talks to start next year. But going so far as to get the exact timing into the formal statement to be delivered by APEC leaders at the end of their summit on Nov. 16 was another issue.
Opponents like Malaysia argue that APEC's credibility would be damaged if it were to set a target to push for a fresh round of negotiations and then miss that target.
"It will be futile if we simply fool ourselves if anyone tries to talk about setting a date for a new round," said Dato Seri Rafidah Aziz, Malaysia's Minister of International Trade and Industry.
Amid a backlash against globalization, WTO talks collapsed in Seattle last year. And some members of APEC have argued that APEC should act as a collective force to push for a fresh round of talks to show that APEC is more than simply a champion of free trade.
Some have already expressed suspicions over the real function of the loose intergovernmental forum in pushing for trade liberalization, which remains one of the major "pillars" of the 11-year-old grouping.
The body itself has had an ambitious plan to push for trade liberalization under the 1994 Bogor Declaration, with the aim to remove trade barriers by 2010 for advanced countries or by 2020 for poorer members. But critics have said APEC had made little headway in reach its tariff-cutting goals.
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