Russia deal on backburner as Peters heads to Apec

Winston Peters will catch up with foreign ministers at Apec he met a decade ago. Photo / File

Foreign Minister Winston Peters is heading to Apec in Vietnam this week, but says pursuing a trade deal with the Russian bloc will not be a focus.

The Labour-New Zealand First coalition agreement specifies working towards a free trade deal with the Russia-Belarus-Kazakhstan Customs Union. Russia and New Zealand were close to a free trade deal, but pulled back after Russia seized Crimea from the Ukraine in 2014.

Last week European Union ambassador Bernard Savage said that pursuing trade talks with Russia would be viewed in a "very negative" light, prompting Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to say that a free trade deal with the EU was a higher priority than a deal with the Customs Union.

Asked about restarting talks with Russia, whose president Vladimir Putin will also be at Apec, Peters said this trip would focus on Apec and then the East Asia Summit in the Philippines, not on the trade deal with the Customs Union.

"But as the former ambassador to Russia [Stuart] Prior pointed out, you can negotiate things as you're fixing up items and issues of difference between yourselves," Peters told Newstalk ZB.

"Not try and fix something up and then, when that's fixed up, begin the trade negotiations. That's over to [Trade Minister David] Parker and others, but we were a long way down the track when it was stalled, and I think Prior is 100 per cent right."

The Government will be pushing for changes to the 11-nation Trans Pacific Partnership deal, focusing on changing the investor-state dispute resolution (ISDS) clauses that Ardern has called a "dog". The clauses allow investors to take direct action against a host country.

Peters said he was looking forward to seeing other ministers and former ministers who had met when he was last Foreign Minister under the Helen Clark-led Government from 2005 to 2008.

"They've already written to me, welcoming me back, so I have to say I'm looking forward to meeting them."

Among those who had written to him were former Japanese Foreign Minister and Prime Minister Taro Aso and Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

Peters said he supported "fair and reasonable" trade.

"That's always been something that we've heavily subscribed to. When you get into areas where certain requirements are being objected to by nation states, that's where you get difficulties, and we're working our way through one of those now."