Picking up pieces at Apec

By AUDREY YOUNG political editor

New Zealand representatives will join Apec trade and foreign ministers in Bangkok today for the most important trade-focused meeting since the collapse of the Doha trade liberalisation talks in Cancun, Mexico, last month.

What emerges in the way of commitments from the Bangkok meeting could provide a steer as to whether "Humpty" can be put together again, as one senior official put it.

Failures in the World Trade Organisation's Doha development round will encourage the growth of more fractured bilateral and sub-regional trade deals - most of which cut out New Zealand.

Foreign Minister Phil Goff and Trade Negotiations Minister Jim Sutton are in Bangkok for the ministerial meeting today and tomorrow, ahead of the leaders' summit on Monday and Tuesday.

It is not a trade negotiation meeting: Doha comes under the umbrella of the World Trade Organisation, not the Apec grouping of 21 Pacific rim countries. However, New Zealand will try to muster as much political will as possible at Apec to reactivate talk in the Doha round. It may not be as easy as it sounds.

Apec economies include members of some of the leading Cancun factions of the 146 WTO members, including the United States and China.

Prime Minister Helen Clark said the Cancun meeting heightened interest in Bangkok.

"I think it is an even more important meeting because of the failure of Cancun," she said earlier in the week.

"When Apec was founded, one of the key purposes was to have a strong push for opening up international trade and to get a whole Pacific-wide region behind it.

"This one is going to say, 'Look, we just can't leave this [Cancun] as a failed ministerial - how do we get more momentum into the round? That will be absolutely a key part of the meeting."

Helen Clark said in Singapore she hoped the increased interest in bilateral and regional deals after the Cancun failure would "not distract negotiators from the overwhelming importance of the Doha development round".

"Nor should any such agreements undermine the WTO round," she said in a speech to the Institute of Policy Studies.

"Bilateral deals which carve out sensitive sectors achieve only limited market access objectives and reduce the stake which members have in a successful WTO round.

"Apec leaders can play a key role in setting benchmark standards in this area, as they can in helping to get the Doha round back on track."

Getting Doha reactivated is New Zealand's top trade priority.

But at the Apec meeting, New Zealand will push for stronger and clearer commitment from other Apec countries to meet their so-called Bogor goals of free trade and investment - with the moral authority of having announced further tariff reductions in New Zealand to 2009.

The goals, of 2010 for developed countries and 2020 for developing countries, were set at Bogor, Indonesia, in 1994.

"No doubt there will also be a Bogor goals stock-take," Helen Clark said. "We've taken our tariff review programme through to 2009 and we are interested in knowing what others are proposing to do in 2010 on, or in moving towards that date."

New Zealand was given a glowing report in an Apec report in August of its progress towards the goals, which said it was "on track" to reach them.

Greens co-leader Rod Donald said yesterday the Government was "dreaming" if it thought it could reinvigorate the WTO's Doha round.

Developing countries had put their collective feet down and told the rich world there would be no more concessions from the poor until wealthy countries stopped distorting trade rules in their own favour.

"The last thing we need is for the Government to liberalise our economy even more. When will they open their eyes to the fact that New Zealand is the only country playing the Apec strip poker game in its underwear."

* Herald political editor Audrey Young is travelling to Bangkok to cover the Apec summit.