ASIA-PACIFIC: Mixed APEC Agenda Shows Its Changed Nature

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Oct 18 2003 (IPS) - Just as the curtain goes up on Thailand’s biggest-ever international show Monday – a summit that will include the leaders of China, Japan, Russia and the United States – petty politics has stepped into the spotlight.

The protagonists involved are no lightweights: Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and the director-general of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), Supachai Panichpakdi, who was a leading member of Thailand’s opposition Democrat Party till he took over as head of the body that champions free trade.

On the eve of this leaders’ summit on Oct. 20-21, Thaksin made it known that Supachai was not welcome to formally participate at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, which groups 21 economies that span this geographic terrain from China on one end to Chile on the other.

This snub, which the Thai press attributed to local politics, resulted in Supachai being denied a chance of addressing the APEC trade ministers meeting on Friday.

But this turn of events – described as unprecedented by the English-language daily ‘The Nation’ since the WTO head had addressed previous APEC gatherings – helps illustrate the attitudes set to dominate this month’s forum.

For one, denying Supachai the chance to speak will mean the ”WTO issues not being given priority during the APEC forum,” says Thitinan Pongsudhirak of the international relations department at Chulalongkorn University here.

”This does not help those who have hoped that the APEC meeting would have given a much needed boost to the WTO,” he adds.

”And even if it remains on the agenda and is discussed, I have doubts about what it will translate to, since both the Thai and the U.S. governments are not placing much currency on the WTO,” he adds during an interview.

This goes against the arguments by some APEC members, including New Zealand, that the APEC summit should serve as a platform to back calls to revive trade talks at the WTO after the collapse of negotiations in Cancun, Mexico last month.

The communiqué issued by APEC ministers Saturday said only that a new round of trade talks, which developing countries opposed at Cancun, ”offers the potential for real gains for all economies, and particularly developing economies”.

Commentators both here and in the region have noted that the APEC summit will be keenly followed for any commitments to strengthen the WTO. After all, the Bangkok gathering will be the first major international meeting after the Cancun debacle.

The fifth WTO ministerial meeting there failed to produce any results to advance the cause of a rules-based multilateral free trade environment for the world. The collapse followed serious disagreements between developed and developing nations over contentious issues such as the farm subsidies and new investment regulations.

Besides that, there have been other pointers to where the spotlight will focus on during the APEC summit.

They include the emphasis being placed on bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) to shape the pace of free trade in the region.

On Friday, a report in the ‘Bangkok Post’ newspaper had Thai trade officials saying that the emergence of bilateral FTAs was placing APEC’s original aims under pressure.

”Thailand will urge the 21 Asia-Pacific economies to speed up goals for trade liberalisation in the face of earlier time frames set by bilateral trade plans in the region, a source disclosed,” the English-language daily reported. Yet the APEC ministers tried to counter the view that the bilateral accords are undermining APEC, saying in their Saturday communiqué that ”intra-APEC” free trade accords ”could contribute to APEC’s goals of free and open trade and investment provided they were consistent with WTO rules and disciplines”.

Thailand is expected to launch free-trade talks with the United States. Bangkok signed a free trade agreement this year with China, and plans are afoot for it to go down this same road with Australia, Chile, Japan, Mexico and Peru – all APEC members.

The United States has already an FTA with Singapore.

This trend marks a further departure from the vision of APEC, affirmed in Bogor, Indonesia, in 1994. At that summit, the developed member economies committed to opening up to free trade and investment by 2010, while the developing economies were given until 2020 to achieve this goal.

That vision, however, was based on each country volunteering to meet its responsibilities for a free trade area in the Asia-Pacific region, rather than the rules-based and more binding obligations of the 146 countries that are WTO members.

The 21-member APEC economies are: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, Peru, Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, United States and Vietnam.

The APEC region, which is home to 2.5 billion of the world’s population, accounts for 47 percent of world trade and Gross Domestic Product of over 18 trillion U.S. dollars. It was created in 1989 to promote a sound free trade relationship between member economies.

But the issue that is expected to gain centre stage at the APEC forum – and by implication affirm the new creature that it has become – is the push by Washington to discuss security-related matters, including a call to support the Bush administration’s ‘war on terrorism’.

This development does not surprise political scientist Thitinan. ”Since the September 11 terrorist attacks in the U.S. the APEC agenda has changed dramatically,” he asserts. ”APEC has been dominated by security issues, because that is all the U.S. is interested in.”

The APEC ministers’ document, too, switches from free trade to terrorism, mentioning work to block ”the cross-border movement of equipment, funds and people involved in the transnational terrorist activities”.

At last year’s APEC meetings in Mexico, terrorism and security issues also towered above issues relating to its founding concerns – commerce and trade.

At the October 2001 APEC meeting in China, held just over a month after the Sep. 11 acts of terror in New York and Washington, APEC leaders for the first time released a political statement, condemning terrorism.