[asia-apec 1237] NZ: Media on SOM III

[Gatt Watchdog]

The Press, Christchurch, NZ
3/8/99

Ground set for start to Apec talks

by Victoria Main
in Wellington

Asia-Pacific officials will, over the next week, put the finishing
touches to the free-trade agenda for the region's political
leaders to consider at their Auckland summit in six weeks.

With the irritants of the World Trade Organisation job wrangle and
the Antipodean lamb trade dispute with the United States tidied
away, Apec officials will focus on the nuts and bolts of the
organisation's ongoing programme for deregulation.

A series of Apec meetings begin in Rotorua today, culminating in a
retreat and then a formal session for senior officials from August
11 to 13.

The WTO row threatening Apec unity has been resolved by a
job-share deal between Labour MP Mike Moore and Thai Deputy Prime
Minister Supachai Panitchpakdi.

Apec spokesman Maarten Wevers said yesterday that the job contest
had not been an Apec issue, but he welcomed the compromise
solution to split the post between two member candidates.

"Having that issue resolved in that constructive and pro-Apec way
is very positive," Mr Wevers said.

New Zealand and Australia's WTO action against the United States
for its lamb tariffs has curtained off another point of regional
discord, even if Mr Wevers said that row was not strictly an Apec
matter.

"It's cleared away that area of uncertainty and risk," he said.

New Zealand's stewardship of the decade-old Apec grouping follows
last year's disastrous Kuala Lumpur summit at the height of the
Asian recession.

International Trade Minister Lockwood Smith said Apec senior
officials had a lot of work to get through before the September
meeting of foreign affairs and trade ministers leading into the
leaders' summit.

"How successfully they do that work helps the job of (Foreign
Affairs Minister) Don McKinnon and me at that ministerial meeting.
If it's incomplete, we've got to get it tidy for the leaders," Dr
Smith said.

He was mulling over possible input that Mr Moore, as the WTO's new
director-general, could have into the final Apec summit.