KEY POINTS:
Prime Minister Helen Clark flies into Sydney this week as one of an elder stateswoman of the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation forum. This is her eighth Apec, and she is topped only in longevity by the Sultan of Brunei and this year's host, Australian Prime Minister John Howard.
For Clark and Howard, this may be a last-chance summit. Both are trailing in the polls, with Howard almost universally expected to fail to win a fifth term in this year's elections and hoping to avert disaster through the reflection of his association with the world's great and powerful.
But for New Zealand, Clark's experience and personal familiarity with the 20 other leaders who will gather for the summit - among them presidents George W. Bush of the United States, Hu Jintao of China and Vladimir Putin of Russia - could help nudge the world towards new positions that could greatly benefit the nation.
No sweeping commitments are expected from this summit. Apec works by consensus which, when dealing with economies of vastly different sizes, wealth and priorities, means that any agreement is voluntary and usually incremental. This is the world of soft politics, that at its best can push into areas of great sensitivity and help promote change, or, at its worst, prevaricate Apec into irrelevancy.
Wellington, a long-time supporter of Apec, believes in the first option. It provides the leader of a tiny nation of four million at the bottom of the globe the opportunity to talk regularly with some of the planet's most powerful politicians, on a first-name basis. But there is a recognition that Apec needs to work, that it has already become cumbersome, is in danger of bogging down in the complexity of the issues it debates, and that its programme must be clearly focused to avoid dilution and paralysis..
This is why India, one of the fastest-rising economies in the world and an emerging regional great power, is likely to be blackballed in Sydney. India has been on the membership waiting list for 14 years and, with other countries ranging from Colombia to Laos and Mongolia, was hoping for an end to the 10-year moratorium declared in 1997.
Wellington, like Australia, prefers to move the membership focus away from India to emphasise that a decision on opening membership again will be made by the leaders in an "open and free-flowing" discussion. Although there is not yet an agreed position, there appears to be an emerging consensus that the moratorium should be extended.
But because of its size and growth, India is the focus. One school of thought argues that the realities of the immense shifts in regional power demand its inclusion. There is another view that Apec is already struggling to deal with its core business of trade liberalisation and the still-distant hopes of an Apec free trade area, and fears that this could be further thrown off track by an expanded membership.
Wellington believes debate on the moratorium also needs to take into account the human dynamics of a group of 21 leaders who at present work well together.
It worries that these dynamics may change if more leaders are given seats at the table, and that a larger membership could create a more formalised structure.
A key example of Wellington's desire to maintain focus is the inclusion of climate change on the Sydney agenda, pushed by Clark at the last Apec in Hanoi, Vietnam, on the grounds that to remain relevant the organisation needed to tackle the issue.
Clark successfully argued that Apec needed to help find ways of protecting the environment while promoting economic growth - a large thorn between industrialised and developing members.
There will be no clear, definitive action plan on climate change in Sydney. No one expected one, and Howard said at the weekend that no agreement on greenhouse gas emissions targets or other binding commitments would be possible. Wellington is comfortable with this. While New Zealand may wish otherwise, the reality is that the best that can be hoped for is an agreement to add momentum to international action and provide a stepping stone to the United Nations' Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bali in December.
Apec is seen as part of a continuum that includes the continuing dialogue of the Group of Eight Plus Five leading developing economies, Japan's Cool Earth 50 initiative, Bush's conference of major greenhouse gas emitters in Washington this month, and China's unilateral statement on climate change.
Wellington believes Apec can be an important part of that process, embracing as it does 60 per cent of global energy demand and 40 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and including both major energy producers and major energy consumers - not to mention the US, China, Japan, Russia and other significant developed and developing players.
More fraught is trade.
Apec appears to have little hope of achieving its target of removing tariffs among industrialised members by 2010 and developing countries by 2020, and ambitions for an Asia Pacific free trade area are but a distant gleam in the eyes of its advocates.
New Zealand is not as pessimistic as others about Apec's trade performance, given that average tariffs within the region have fallen from more than 17 per cent to just above 5 per cent.
Wellington sees the challenge in Sydney to be the development by the leaders of some sort of policy position that will help recharge World Trade Organisation negotiations in Geneva - not an easy goal, as the same fault lines that run through the WTO also extend to Apec.
With the WTO Doha round talks running dangerously close to the end of the road, New Zealand believes it is crucial for Apec to show leadership. Two factors could kick this along: human chemistry and personal dynamics among the leaders, and the reality that the closer the talks move towards the abyss, the more sobering the prospects of failure become.
New Zealand wants specifics and a declaration from Apec that will send clear signals to negotiators in the corridors of Geneva. History gives a precedent in the Uruguay round of talks under the former General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which succeeded after eleventh-hour bargaining in smoke-filled backrooms.
But Wellington also knows that history does not always repeat.
What New Zealand does see is the evolution of the trade debate beyond border issues such as tariffs and quotas to include equally - or even more - important behind-the-border barriers, including standards, customs, electronic communications and protection of intellectual property.
Wellington wants Apec leaders in Sydney to instruct officials to move in new directions on behind-the-border issues in the belief that open markets per se do not guarantee economic growth and that structural reform is also needed, politically sensitive as this may be in many countries.
This is where soft diplomacy comes in, gentle explanation and information, using simple examples to make the point.
For example, in New Zealand and Australia it takes two transactions over about an hour to set up a company; elsewhere in the region, this can require 130 transactions over six months.
Beyond this are hopes for an Asia-Pacific free trade area. Again, no one expects much but Wellington's hope is that this summit may take a further, tentative, step towards the goal.
