By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Oct 21 2003 (IPS)

Leaders of 21 Pacific Rim economies succeeded in salvaging some relevance in their gathering – the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit – by coming to the rescue of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and by laying out a blueprint to take on ”transnational terrorist groups”.

At the end of the two-day summit here Tuesday, the leaders affirmed that they wanted to breathe life into the WTO, after its last round of ministerial talks collapsed in Cancun, Mexico, last month.

The declaration also cemented the new turn that APEC, which was set up in 1989 to promote regional free trade, has made – becoming another launching pad to back the U.S.-led ‘war against terrorism’.

In fact, the language in the four-page declaration revealed how marked this shift has been. The Asia-Pacific leaders’ commitments on the security front were more detailed and entailed concrete measures, while the pledges about the WTO were rich in rhetoric but short on specifics.

To combat transnational terrorism, for instance, the Bangkok Declaration stated that the APEC member economies had agreed to adopt strict domestic export controls, to secure stockpiles and to take domestic action to ”regulate the production, transfer and brokering” of man-portable missiles, such as shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles (known as SAMs).

The leaders also agreed to ”dismantle, fully and without delay, transnational terrorist groups that threaten the APEC economies”.

They committed to establishing ”a regional trade and financial security initiative with the Asian Development Bank, to support projects that enhance port security, combat terrorist finance, and achieve other counter-terrorism objectives”.

In keeping with the focus on security, the APEC members also expressed concern – although implicitly – about security threats to the region posed by North Korea. They committed to ”eliminate the severe and growing danger posed by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction”.

Such an overwhelming stress on security at a gathering meant for trade marks the continuation of a trend that first occurred at the 2001 APEC forum hosted by China, followed by last year’s meeting in Mexico.

This pattern, which emerged in the wake of the Sep. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, indicates a further shift away from the free-trade 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.

On the WTO, the declaration stated that APEC ”reaffirmed the primacy of the multilateral trading system” and agreed to support free-trade talks shaped by the Doha Development Agenda, which was supposed to enable developing countries to gain a secure foothold in the world economy.

That included APEC backing attempts to abolish ”all forms of agricultural export subsidies, unjustifiable export prohibitions and restrictions, and commit ourselves to work in the negotiating group on rules in accordance with the Doha mandate”.

At last month’s fifth ministerial meeting of the WTO, trade talks among its 146 member countries collapsed due to broad range of disagreements between the developing world and the developed world, including on the hefty subsidies the developed countries were pumping into their agriculture sector.

But the significance of APEC’s views on the WTO was not lost on the leaders of Thailand and Chile in the wake of the fact that this week’s meeting was the first major international gathering after the WTO’s dramatic failure in Mexico.

”The message from us is important: that the WTO talks should continue,” Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra told a press conference at the close of the APEC summit. ”We would like to send a political signal that we need to press ahead with the Doha development round.”

”All of us are committed to free trade. We feel there is some room to open the doors that were closed in Cancun,” Chilean President Ricardo Lagos Escobar told the media.

However, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad was more circumspect, stressing a point he has come to be known for – that what the world needs is more fair trade, not free trade. ”Free trade may not be fair but fair trade can be free,” he told the press.

Although he said he supported the Bangkok declaration, Mahathir expressed concern about the disadvantage developing countries face in the current climate of global free market. ”You don’t trade with a country to impoverish it,” he said. ”We need to insist on an equitable system.”

Thaksin drew attention to this in his final statement to the press. ”Development should be an important aspect of the (next round of WTO talks),” he said, adding that ”differences in the levels of development should not be ignored”.

Among APEC’s members are developing countries, such as China, and developed countries, such as the United States, who lined up on either side of the bitter debate in Cancun that led to the WTO talks’ collapse.

The 21member economies of APEC 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 fact that the animosity from Cancun is not reflected in APEC’s declaration ”has to be welcomed,” Asvin Dayal of the British development agency Oxfam told IPS. ”The language is more moderate and conciliatory, and if there is a commitment to support the multilateral trading arrangement that genuinely addresses developing country concerns, it is good.”

However, he cautions against optimism, since APEC has stuck to language that is ”sufficiently broad” and there is a fear that the industrialised countries will ”bully” developing countries into towing their line.

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