Trade path laid for Clark

PUSAN - New Zealand's trade ministers have left the Apec meeting in South Korea hopeful they have laid a path towards global free trade talks for Helen Clark and the rest of the region's leaders.

Trade ministers Phil Goff (incoming) and Jim Sutton (outgoing) have left the Korean port town of Pusan after helping to draft statements that the 21 Apec member leaders will debate on Friday and Saturday.

At the top of the agenda was getting agreement in the region over stalled World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks.

The WTO trade round was meant to be signing off a detailed action plan at a meeting in Hong Kong in December, but the talks have ground to a standstill with many blaming the European Union's lack of willingness to move agricultural market access.

Mr Sutton said the talks were "flirting with disaster" and Apec leaders would know they had a once in the lifetime opportunity to get some progress in global trade liberalisation.

"I think we are going to see as a result the leaders who meet in the rest of the week have the opportunity to make probably the strongest statement on the multilateral round negotiations that has ever come out of Apec," Mr Sutton said.

It is hoped that the statement might help because the 21 members account for half of the world's trade and much of its political and military clout.

"Statements out of Apec leaders in the past have clearly been influential and certainly they can contribute momentum," Mr Sutton said.

Another need for urgency is that United States President George W. Bush's mandate to sign free trade deals that can only be ratified or rejected by congress -- and not amended -- expires in 2007.

This had created another deadline for all the countries that want the US to liberalise its trading regime, Mr Sutton said.

Mr Goff said no one at Apec wanted the Hong Kong meeting called off.

"Yes there is a potential crisis, but yes there is also a mood around Apec that we have got to find ways of addressing this."

Without a fresh round of global trade liberalisation, the developed and the developing world would be worse off, Mr Goff said.

"If you were to quantify that cost you would say it would be in the tens of billions of dollars."

Apec trade ministers represent 47 per cent of the world's trade and the "sheer size" of Apec with the world's largest economic, military and political powers meant it could make a difference, he said.

Apec was intended to create a free trade zone amongst the developed nations on the Pacific rim by 2010. Ministers agree this is unlikely to be achieved, but say the forum has still made important progress in trade liberalisation and stabilising the region politically.

Apec members include Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Taipei, China, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Thailand, the United States and Vietnam.

- NZPA