[APEC] Preview: leaders to unite against poverty, epidemics, terrorism

From Monsters and Critics

Busan, South Korea - Leaders of the United States, China, Japan, Russia and 17 other nations will pool efforts this week against avian influenza and other epidemic diseases, terrorism and global poverty.

The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation heads of state will also promote more liberalization of world trade, and their two-day summit is expected to draw thousands of anti-globalization protesters to the South Korean port city of Busan.

Foreign and economic ministers have met to hammer out a joint Busan Declaration and several documents for their leaders to present after meetings on Friday and Saturday. Top of their agenda is a strong leaders' statement urging all nations to work for progress in next month's crucial World Trade Organisation talks in Hong Kong.

U.S. President George W. Bush, Chinese President Hu Jintao and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi have all promised to raise initiatives on bird flu and other infectious diseases, and the summit is expected to issue an action plan for sharing information and responding rapidly to global epidemics.

Other key topics include cooperation in the fight against cross-border terrorism and corruption, and the effects of natural disasters in the region, especially the devastating tsunami that hit Asian countries bordering the Indian Ocean.

The leaders will also encourage efforts to negotiate the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.

China has kept the momentum in protracted six-party talks over North Korea's nuclear weapons programme, balancing the tough demands of North Korea and the United States, and persuading the other five parties to agree to a joint statement of principles. APEC members South Korea, Russia and Japan are also participating in the talks.

Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing last week said Hu planned to present China's views in Busan on 'advancing the balanced developent, stability and sustainable growth of the global economy' and would 'introduce China's future economic development plan'.

The APEC leaders plan to hold several bilateral sessions during the summit.

South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun has promised to meet Koizumi on Friday, despite the Japanese leader's latest visit to the controversial Yasukuni war shrine. But a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman on Tuesday said there was 'no such arrangement' for a meeting between Hu and Koizumi, 'because we don't think the atmosphere or conditions are right'.

Bush is scheduled to hold bilateral talks in Busan with Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, according to the White House's official itinerary. U.S. officials also requested a meeting between Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Bush will travel to Beijing late Saturday, immediately after the APEC summit, for meetings with Hu and other Chinese leaders on Sunday.

Some 40,000 security personnel will be deployed in Busan, with an alliance of South Korean farmers and international anti-globalization groups promising to mobilize 100,000 protesters in the city on Friday.

APEC groups nations whose 2.6 billion people account for about half of the global economy. It was founded in 1989 with the aim of creating a free-trade region, and the Busan summit was originally planned to focus on the group's 1994 Bogor goals for promoting free trade.

But the summit is instead dominated by the upcoming WTO talks.

During the ministerial meetings this week in Busan, South Korean Trade Minister Kim Hyun Chong said the APEC leaders would send a 'strong political message' to the WTO.

Kim brought together APEC's trade ministers with WTO chief Pascal Lamy on the sidelines of the meeting to discuss the row over agricultural subsidies within the WTO. Critics blame the European Union and the United States for failing to offer substantial cuts in farm subsidies at the WTO talks.

The WTO's current Doha development round was launched in Qatar in 2001 with the specific intention of reforming trade rules to benefit developing countries.

The international aid agency Oxfam last week said that, four years on, development issues were being pushed aside by headline grabbing disputes between rich nations. Oxfam said the December 13-18 WTO ministerial talks in Hong Kong would fail unless rich countries made offers to open their markets for poor nations.

'It's no exaggeration to say that these [Doha] negotiations hold the key to a better future for billions of people,' World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz said recently in Beijing.