KEY POINTS:
In a small but perfectly formed hotel room in Cordoba Ave, central Buenos Aires, I am catching up on what is happening on the ground in Peru (and NZ) where I am heading at first light tomorrow to cover the Apec summit.
According to AFP, security in Lima
is heavy and there will be three rows of police surrounding the airport to prevent incidents at the leaders' arrivals.
The terrorist group Shining Path works mainly from the mountain regions, Foreign Affairs officials told us in briefing last week. But the group killed three police officers at the weekend in southeastern Peru.
And a man was arrested in central Lima last week with 36 grenades in his backpack.
Apec wouldn't be Apec without the fear of a terrorist attack. But security isn't always that impenetrable as the Chaser's showed in Sydney last year, getting "Osama Bin Laden' into the official party in the "Canadians" motorcade.
Prime Minister John Key [the first time I have written that] is in the air already and is flying the short and expensive route via Santiago, Chile, where Apec was held in 2004. Other media are flying via Los Angeles.
We should all be on the ground in Lima tomorrow to talk to Tim Groser and Murray McCully about the Foreign and Trade Ministers meeting today and tomorrow.
I've been to South American once before, in 2004, to cover Apec in Chile where the anti-Bush fever was palpable. Huge demonstrations against the war in Iraq.
NZ was led by team Clark, Goff and Sutton . Goff was in his element like I had never seen him before - until this past week when he was made Labour leader.
By 2004 Goff had been in the job five years and was starting to get known on the circuit. And when I ran into him at his hotel lobby he was absolutely fizzing after a bilateral meeting with his Russian counterpart at the time, Sergei Lavrov. They they had discussed, among other things, the recent appointment of Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State, and I think Goff realized he had "arrived."
Rice is now attending her final Apec but did not make today's meeting in Lima with McCully, delayed apparently by unspecified issues and meetings in Washington.
I trust it is not through security concerns.
