APEC trade ministers support new, leaner WTO round

Asian Economic News, June 12, 2000

DARWIN, Australia, June 6 Kyodo

Trade ministers from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum have recommitted themselves to a broad round of negotiations within the World Trade Organization (WTO), but agreed the agenda must be simplified, Australian Trade Minister Mark Vaile said Tuesday.

"The APEC ministers have agreed to recommit, reaffirm their support for the leaders' statement that came out of Auckland last year toward the launch of a broad range of multilateral trade negotiations as soon as is possible," Vaile told reporters after the first of two days of talks.

"It would be fair enough to say that there were concerns expressed that we don't have a repeat of Seattle, that when we attempt a ministerial (meeting) again within the WTO to launch a round of negotiations, we are sure that it is achievable, that it is deliverable, so there's got to be a lot of work," he said.

At last September's Auckland summit, the leaders of APEC's 21 member economies agreed to support a broad round of global trade negotiations including industrial goods, in addition to the already mandated negotiations on agriculture and services.

However, the round failed to be launched at the WTO ministerial meeting in Seattle last December, which was marred by violent street protests and deep disagreements between WTO members.

Japanese International Trade and Industry Minister Takashi Fukaya said the APEC ministers expressed their concerns about the launch of a new round.

"The fact is that all of us in the meeting were able to confirm with each other there are difficulties to overcome before we can successfully launch the new round," he told reporters.

"Having said this, everybody in the meeting agreed that efforts should be pursued toward the early launch of the new round," he said.

"What was very important was that everybody said very clearly that every economy in this region remains strongly committed to the WTO trading system," he said.

Vaile said there was agreement among the APEC trade ministers that too many sensitive issues had been placed at the heart of the Seattle negotiations, leading to their breakdown.

"It wasn't so much the protests or the process that caused Seattle to fail as much as an overloaded agenda...we are collectively responsible for that in terms of overloading the agenda and trying to conduct negotiations before we even launched the round," he said.

"We were trying to pre-negotiate a round in Seattle instead of agreeing on the scope and modalities of launching a round. Seattle was supposed to be a start, not the actual conduct of negotiations," he said.

Vaile said some of the issues dividing WTO members -- such as labor standards, investment, competition and the environment -- should be dealt with on the sidelines of negotiations, rather than at their core.

"Certainly all those issues are of significant importance to different countries around the world...and we need to be finding ways of not so much directly dealing with them but how we manage them within the process of getting to launch a round," he said.

Vaile said the issue of launching a new round has become more sensitive in the wake of the Seattle meeting, but the APEC recommitment was significant in rebuilding momentum.

WTO Director General Mike Moore, who attended the APEC talks on Tuesday, agreed that APEC's support was important.

"I think it is significant, 60-70% of the world's economic activity is represented here in Darwin through trade ministers and it will add to the momentum in Geneva," he told reporters.

"APEC has created a climate in the region for more openness," he said.