BEIJING: This year’s just-finished Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting made history by straying away from the forum’s trade and economic agenda to issue an unprecedented political statement condemning terrorism.
While applauded for having united its diverse member economies behind a common declaration on a major political issue, this year’s meeting, which ended on Sunday, has done little to uphold APEC’s founding principles of free trade and broad-based Asian development.
On the contrary, by shifting its attention to politics, the Shanghai APEC meeting only heightened the sense of loss of direction of a forum that was created more than a decade ago to promote trade liberalization, but remains lacking on concrete initiatives to realize its agenda.
As the 20 Pacific Rim leaders wrapped up the Shanghai summit, concern remained about whether in the aftermath of the Sept 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, regional economic borders would start closing instead of opening up.
In keeping with earlier APEC communiques — long on statements of intent but short on specific measures — the Shanghai declaration called for deeper cooperation, a reversal of the slump in global economic growth and the launch of a new round of trade talks.
The main communique was accompanied by a Shanghai accord, which said that member states may move toward APEC’s long-range trade goals more quickly if they wished.
Concerns about the slowdown of the world economy, which has significantly worsened since the Sept 11 attacks, topped the list of economic issues discussed during the APEC meetings.
For the first time in more than 10 years, the world’s three leading economic regions — the United States, Europe and Japan — are declining at the same time.
Over the past four years, the economies of the former Asian economic tigers such as Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia have also taken a battering. Protectionist forces inside those countries have tried to slow measures to open up the economies.
Fears are ripe that security concerns in the aftermath of the US attacks might cause multinational companies to pull back from risky markets or that customs authorities will place putting restrictions on exports from South-east Asian ports such as Bangkok, Jakarta and Manila.
Concrete measures agreed by APEC leaders to limit the fallout from the Sept 11 attacks include: enhanced airport, aircraft and port security, an integrated global customs network, prevention of the flow of funds to terrorists and early signing of the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism.
The anti-terrorism statement was silent on members’ positions on the US-led retaliation against Afghanistan — and Indonesia and Malaysia expressed concern about civilian casualties the longer the conflict goes on. Wary that endorsing anti-terrorist measures means erecting another barrier to the free flow of money and labour in the region, APEC leaders ended their summit with a robust call for a new round of global trade talks.
The endorsement comes even as many developing states remain uneasy about the benefits of globalization. Malaysia’s Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad has been particularly vocal in raising concerns about the risks that more-open trading systems bring to developing economies. As one of the few practical policy initiatives agreed on, APEC said it will host a debate on the form and benefits of globalization.—Dawn/InterPress Service.