SANTIAGO (AFP) - Asia-Pacific leaders will push "very hard" at a summit this weekend for a successful outcome to World Trade Organization free-trade negotiations, Chilean President Ricardo Lagos said.
Fair rules to regulate trade were crucial "to bring some order at the global level so that big and small economies" could compete without any discrimination, said Lagos, who chairs the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
"We are going to push very hard to put again movement in the Doha round so that it is successful," he told a APEC business leaders' conference.
The round of talks is aimed at a binding international treaty among 148 World Trade Organization nations but disagreements over how to proceed in key areas such as agriculture have bogged down negotiations.
"We will like to have fair rules to have law and order and to have access to markets and financial facilities otherwise it is difficult to compete in a world that is becoming more global without any rules," Lagos said.
He stressed that economies, while adhering to global trade rules, should also be allowed to forge bilateral and regional free trade agreements.
"We have to take into account why so many different countries among APEC have taken the road to (having) trade agreements" among themselves, he said.
Lagos did not comment on a controversial plan for an Asia-Pacific free trade area that has apparently split the APEC grouping.
Chile, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan and Singapore back the plan while others such as China, Japan, Malaysia and Indonesia were cautious or opposed it, APEC sources say.
Most opposition revolved around worries that it might torpedo the WTO round of global trade talks and that developing economies, which are cautiously opening their markets, needed more time to prepare for full competition.
Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, speaking at the same conference, backed the Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific, or FTAAP, plan, saying it "will help us realize concretely" the goals of APEC to knock down all barriers to trade and investment by 2020.
"However, it may take some time to realise such an ambitious goal," he said of the plan.
Lee said that while APEC worked towards a single free trade deal for all its 21 member economies, it should in parallel aim for a more comprehensive web of bilateral free trade agreements.
Azman Hashim, Malaysia's representative at the APEC Business Advisory Council, said some groups in APEC wanted a more "immediate and thorough" liberalization while others wanted to build up "capacity to level the playing field" before facing full blown competition.
Hernan Somerville, the business council chairman, said the APEC summit should consider the council's request for a study of the the FTAAP prospect.
"We have not asked the leaders to launch a negotiation on the Asia-Pacific free trade agreement. What we have basically asked in three letters to the leaders is just a feasibility study be conducted," he told the conference.
APEC, which controls nearly half of global trade, comprises Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, the United States and Vietnam.
11/21/2004 - 05:52 GMT - AFP