BANGKOK, 21 October 2003 — The specters of a nuclear North Korea, terrorism and stalled world trade talks dominated a summit of the 21-nation APEC forum which opened yesterday with leaders focusing on the threat these issues pose to their economies.
US President George W. Bush, on an Asian tour to rally support in the battle against terrorism and for reconstruction in Iraq, vowed to emphasize during the two-day talks that “this is still a dangerous world.”
However, some members of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum said they were opposed to security matters sidelining a pressing agenda of economic issues, including the urgent need to restart stalled multilateral trade talks.
“APEC was formed as an economic cooperation group. But we don’t agree with taking away economic matters into security, military or politics, which are not really for APEC,” said outspoken Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad.
Discussions over the North Korean nuclear weapons crisis nevertheless had top billing in bilateral leaders’ meetings yesterday, with the urgency highlighted by North Korea test firing a short-range surface-to-ship missile.
Bush said for the first time Sunday that he would explore ways of satisfying North Korea’s demand for an assurance that the United States would not invade the Stalinist state, but ruled out a bilateral non-aggression accord.
“Perhaps there are other ways we can look at to say exactly what I’ve said publicly on paper with our partners’ consent,” Bush said after discussions on the issue with China’s President Hu Jintao.
The APEC foreign and trade ministers meeting here last week rammed home the message that a poor security situation imperiled the economies of the group’s members, which account for some 60 percent of the world’s economic output.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell told his counterparts that “security and economics are inseparable” and that “we must also be prepared to secure our people and economies from new threats as they arise,” his spokesman said.
APEC leaders yesterday threw their support behind the multilateral trade negotiation process which foundered in Mexico last month and agreed to try to reinvigorate the talks, Thai government spokesman Sihasak Phuangketkeow said. “The general consensus was that all the APEC economies were committed to a free and fair multilateral trading system under the WTO,” he said.
World Trade Organization (WTO) chief Supachai Panichpakdi warned Sunday that a total collapse of current global trade talks could force recession and a proliferation of conflicts. In their meeting, Bush and Hu also agreed to appoint experts to a new panel designed to study how Beijing could move more rapidly toward letting markets set the yuan’s value, a senior US official said.
— Additional input from agencies
