From gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Thu Jul 1 07:44:30 1999 From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Thu, 01 Jul 1999 10:44:30 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1166] NZ Trade Minister on Auckland APEC Meeting Message-ID: MEDIA STATEMENT FROM LOCKWOOD SMITH, NZ TRADE MINISTER 30 June 1999 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE APEC Reinvigorated At Trade Ministers Meeting "APEC Trade Ministers have agreed on a set of practical initiatives that collectively reinvigorate the APEC process," New Zealand Trade Minister Lockwood Smith said today. Dr Smith was speaking today at the conclusion of the two-day meeting of APEC Ministers Responsible For Trade in Auckland, New Zealand. He said the unanimous feedback from his Ministerial colleagues was that the meeting had been a success, and had delivered everything that leaders had requested, and more. "APEC Trade Ministers have delivered on their obligation to move the forum closer towards the Leaders’ goals outlined in Declarations from the Seattle, Bogor, Osaka and Manila meetings," Dr Smith said. "In fact, fourteen of the 21 APEC economies have announced further tariff cuts which will accelerate their progress toward free and open trade and investment ahead of the Bogor goals of 2010 for developed economies and 2020 for developing economies. "We have reaffirmed APEC's credibility and relevance as we recover from the financial crisis and prepare for the APEC Leader’s Meeting in September and the World Trade Organisation Ministerial Meeting in November. "The meeting has produced a list of significant initiatives in an atmosphere as friendly and constructive as any I have seen at an APEC meeting." Dr Smith said it was significant that APEC had continued to move towards its ambitious goals although the region was still recovering from the financial crisis. "Every APEC member agrees that the best way to repair the damage of the crisis and to insure against any future crisis is to make solid progress towards APEC's trade liberalisation and trade facilitation goals, and actively promote the development of robust, transparent markets." "Perhaps the most important outcome was the agreement to push for inclusion of industrial products in the WTO negotiations to be launched in Seattle this year, in addition to trade in agriculture and services, and that these negotiations be concluded within three years," Dr Smith said. "The initiatives confirmed by Ministers may not be as dramatic as APEC's major goal-setting announcements of the mid-1990s, but each one is an important building block towards achieving those ambitious goals. Dr Smith said he was also pleased that it had been possible to make progress on the APEC Food System proposal launched last year by the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC), and looked forward to working with Ministers to develop recommendations for leaders in September. ENDS From fod346 at hotmail.com Thu Jul 1 16:47:05 1999 From: fod346 at hotmail.com (winner white) Date: Thu, 01 Jul 1999 16:47:05 PKT Subject: [asia-apec 1167] Request for Cooperation and Info - SRC Pakistan Message-ID: <19990701114721.83469.qmail@hotmail.com> Sindh Research Council (SRC) is a non-profitmaking , non-governmental and non-sectarian participatory organization of researchers, lawyers, writers and professionals whose mission is to eliminate human rights violations, maltreatment and torture to prisoners, colonialism and apartheid. Sindh Research Council stresses that civil & political rights cannot be dissociated from economic, social, & cultural rights and it works for recognition and promotion of individual civil & political liberties (freedom from arbitrary arrest, detention without trial, & torture or other maltreatment; freedom of movement, association, & expression; religious, conscientious, & philosophical liberty). SRC also believes and struggles for social & economic rights & freedoms (rights to education, health care, work, fair conditions of employment, & maintenance of at least a minimum standard of living) of the people of South Asia in general and Sindh (Area:140914 sq. k.m. Pop:Over 45 Millions) & Pakistan in particular. SRC has been undertaking research & advocacy work in the fields of human rights, sustainable development, environment, media, gender and legal aid since December 1991 with our headquarters in Hyderabad Sindh, SRC has a highly qualified and committed team of approximately 45 people and its executive authority is vested in the central executive committee (including seven office-bearers) which is elected by the general council every three years. In 1994 SRC catalyzed the launching of monthly Subuh Theendo (morning will come) the most popular and largest circulated Sindhi magazine, and since than Sindh Research Council (SRC), Daily Laat and monthly Subuh Theendo (Dawn Will Dawn) have made peace and human rights as their prime concern and area for special focus. In the pages of Subuh Theendo we have been apprising the people of rural areas of Pakistan of their problems in their own language, and have been bringing the said problems in to the notice of the peoples of different continents. Keeping in view the low literacy rate of our country we need a direct communication with our rural masses who can not understand the modern terminology and techniques, therefore Subuh Theendo have started a series of articles like: - What has to be done- Conflicts in South Asia (Published in Subuh Theendo Sept. 1997) - Human Rights violations in Indus valley. (Oct. 1997) - Peace, Poverty & Empowerment (Dec. 1997) - Effective Microorganism and Echo system. ( Jan. 1998) - Religious Fanaticism a Threat for the Region. (Feb. 1998) - Environment, NGOs and Gender Sensitivity (March 1998) - South Asia Peace, Environment and Human Rights (April 1998) - Sindhi Women Issues and Problems (May 1998) - Human Rights & Prisoners (May 1998) - Obstacle of Feudalism (June 1998) - Threat of Kalabagh Hydro Power Dam (August 1998) - Evolution and Environment (Sept. 1998) - Secularism a need of Time (Nov. 1998) - China Conference on Sustainable Dev. & Integrated Water Manag. (Dec. 1998) The peasantry in Pakistan, is among the most oppressed in the world. Our main area of concern is to provide them the database about there Civil and Human Rights and to educate them that development works are stopped because of unavailability of funds due to war adventurism and those few that are under process are usually taking place without any environmental protection consideration. Our comparative adult literacy rate is just 36% and expenditures (% of GDP) on education and health are about 2.7 and 1.8 percent. The governments of South Asia are spending billions on nuclear and conventional weapons while basics such as vaccination against polio, clean water, food, schooling, power generation, etc. are neglected. SRC has over seven years of experience of archival and empirical research , using both conventional as well as innovative methodologies. All of Sindh Research Council's research is action oriented and it has given a substantial input to diverse groups working in rural areas of Sindh & Pakistan. In February 1999 SRC catalyzed the launching of the first and the largest (1048 subscribers) email list for people interested in issues of Pakistan and Sindh generally, and Regional Peace, Environment and Sustainable Development specifically. Sindhorg academic Email list and Witsoft Youth Email List (1200+ subscribers) have been encouraging and facilitating discussions, exchange and constructive debates on various colors and shades of South Asian politics, human rights situation, security concerns, culture and development activities. Sindhorg is a research list which covers the issues, initiatives and events related to Education, Peace, Gender, Legal aid and Human Rights in Pakistan and South Asia. The list is open to the public, so anyone can participate. This historical initiative for awareness and advocacy is designed to raise critical issues and provide communication links and a space for the exchange of information among researchers, activists, academics and professionals interested in all forms of civil and political rights, Sustainable Development & Environmental Communication. Sindhorg subscribers are signed up from different parts of the world, and may subscribe to different customs, cultures, languages and religious persuasions. All the information gathered is made available free of charge to the readers/subscribers. We have also started a WEB page for promotion of PEACE and ENVIRONMENT related information, and we are working to expend its area of coverage and dissemination. Sindhorg Email List: http://www.egroups.com/group/sindhorg Witsoft Email List: http://www.egroups.com/group/witsoft Sindh Research WEB: http://www.angelfire.com/az/Sindh/index.html For seeking cooperation and networking and extension of our resources and information SRC delegates have been participating in different international and Regional conferences and Seminars like: a. SANA conference WASHINGTON DC USA (12-07-1990) b. Mysticism and PEACE seminar DELHI INDIA (16-10- 1987) c. Seminar on Human Rights in South Asia LONDON UK (JANUARY 1987) d. ASIAN STUDENTS ASS. (ASA) conference HONG KONG (27-1-96) e. KARO KARI seminar of Sindhiani Tahreek in Hyderabad. (22-03-95) f. Workshop on WOMEN’S ROLE IN SOCIETY By WORD in KAR (JUN.96) g. Workshop on PEASANT STRUGGLE in AMSTERDAM (28-8-96) h. Seminar on Water Shortage & Kalabagh Dam in Hyderabad (17-03-97) i. OXFAM’S workshop on SIDA in HYDERABAD (16-08-97) j. Workshop on National Drainage Program (NDP) by SPO (5-3-98) k. Women & Dev. Agenda Seminar by Oxfam & SRC in Hyderabad (26-3-98) l. LEAD workshops on Decision Making, Advocacy & Lobbying (July 1998) m. Workshop on ADVOCACY by NGORC in KARACHI (08-08-98) n. Conference on Sustainable Development through Integrated Water Man. China (5-16 Oct.98) o. SDPI & World Bank’s Confer. on Natural Resource Conservation Islamabad(14-16 Dec 98) p. LEAD workshop on Globalization, WTO & Environment Islamabad (1-9 March 1999) Through our field teams, advocacy programs, lobbying campaigns ( against Kalabagh, Ketibander, Explosions, Kirthar Oil Exploration, NDP, Karo Kari Honor Killing etc) and dissemination of subject-specific research material and database SRC is striving to make a meaningful contribution to improving the quality of life; a desire to maximize our effectiveness through creativity and high quality work; and compassion, honesty, love and respect towards mother earth. Signed Ayaz Latif Palijo Chairman Maqsood Memon General Secretary Razak Rind Field Coordinator Members of CEC. Please extend your cooperation and include SRC's address in your mailing list. If you have any queries please do not hesitate to contact us. Addr: B-48, Prince Town, (QA), Hyderabad, Sindh, Pakistan. Phone: 92 - 221 - 651947, 651725 Email : src_st@hyd.netasia.com.pk, ayazl@paknet3.ptc.pk, fsr5st@hotmail.com ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Fri Jul 2 15:01:45 1999 From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Fri, 02 Jul 1999 18:01:45 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1168] NZ Herald on APEC US/NZ trade relations Message-ID: New Zealand Herald, Auckland, June 19-20, 1999 Parties stew over lamb deal United States talk of tariffs does not bode well for Apec by Vernon Small Political Reporter In sport and war there are losers and winners. In the arcane world of diplomacy there are only winners, but of two sorts. There are winners (winners) and "winners" (losers). Or to put it another way, everyone must be able to claim a win of some sort, even if he or she has been shafted. And that is the way the too-ing and fro-ing over US moves to slap tariffs on NZ and Australian lamb is set to end. If the diplomats have been doing their job the winners circle will contain the US producers, who will have tariff protection of some sort, the President, who will have delivered it, and the New Zealand and Australian Governments, who will be able to claim that their relationship with the US made the crucial difference. They will need to claim they saw off the worst. It may be that the outcome of President Bill Clinton's musings will not be known until midweek. That will put his decision after a crucial meeting of US steel producers who are seeking protection against imported steel, mainly from Japan. The steel producers are pondering whether to trust the US International Trade Commission route - "safeguard" tariffs - that the US lamb producers chose or whether to advocate the stroppier option of quotas. President Clinton wants to reassure the steel producers that the ITC route is effective. However, if for the lamb he is leaning towards the commission's softest option - a tariff on future growth of New Zealand and Australian exports but a nil tariff on existing volumes - he might prefer to deliver that decision after the steel vote. Plumping for that soft option (incidentally, the majority ITC recommendation) would offer the added benefit of delivering "winners" all round. Which is not something that you could really say of the third or compromise option of 9 per cent on existing lamb tonnage and 40 per cent on future trade. On the other hand, had we never been told of this third option there would be no room for our Government to claim a pyrrhic victory, for it to be a "winner". A nil tariff on existing tonnage would have the added advantage of deflating New Zealand's strongest argument against the US at the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Since the ITC found only a "threat of injury" from New Zealand's lamb imports, then by implication it found no damage to US domestic producers by existing levels. To then impose a tariff on existing levels would hand New Zealand a strong WTO case. But setting aside for a moment President Clinton's decision and the kudos the Government may be able to claim, the US must ponder a larger issue. A tariff by the US on the country that is hosting the Apec conference would, to put it diplomatically, be a classic own-goal, especially as the US is an ally and is advocating the promotion of Mike Moore to the top WTO job. Then there is the impact of such a decision on one of the Shipley Government's main themes for this Apec round: building support for, and understanding of, Apec in the community. In a week when the current account deficit blew out from an expected 6.1 per cent of gross domestic product to 6.4 per cent - underlining the need for New Zealand to boost its exports to rebalance an over-stimulated domestic economy - it will be even more difficult to explain to a sceptical public and business community that we should be part of the US bloc's attempt to "lower" trade barriers. The questioning by the chief of the Auckland Chamber of Commerce, Michael Barnett, of the speed of the tariff reduction is both an annoyance and a serious worry to the Government in that regard. If the opponents of Apec and its free trade focus, both in this country and elsewhere, ever needed a better public relations weapon, Bill Clinton has it in his hands to deliver it. The US Deputy Trade Representative, Richard Fisher, hasn't helped either. This week, Fisher praised NZ's "magnificent liberalisation of its economy" and "superb leadership" in one breath and then advised that the best way to overcome protectionist forces in the US was to demonstrate the freedom of the US to access other markets. Don't do as we do, do as we say. He said the decision on lamb would take into account the ramifications for world trade reform and would not impact on the Apec meeting's ability to deliver trade reform. That contrasts with the views of our own Trade Minister, Lockwood Smith, and of the Australian Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, who has urged Clinton not to give in to political arm-twisting, which would "send a very negative signal to the world about trade liberalisation." But if the domestic approval of free trade, removal of tariffs and Apec itself has been damaged by the US lamb fracas, other aspects of the Apec forum can deliver a more positive message. In fact, you have to ask whether the Government might be wise to beat a retreat from its over-hyped free trade message. Shipley's own enthusiasm for positive free trade news got her into strife when she returned from the US in January signalling movement on a free trade agreement without the details to back it up. The best option for the Government in the runup to Apec would be to openly acknowledge that this round will be difficult and shift the emphasis towards other goals - strengthening the functions of markets and expanding business opportunities in the Asia Pacific region. But whatever the final domestic verdict on Apec, it is unlikely to deliver the widely touted political filip for the ailing Government. Rubbing shoulders with leaders is, according to the received wisdom, a good thing. It makes you look important and voters are supposed to like that. However, such a strong focus on the international stage may militate against the Government's recovery chances, creating a flat patch in mid-September - just the thing if you are ahead in the polls and wanting to bed that lead in but not the best if you are trailing by about 8 per cent and want to build on the message coming out of the July 9-11 National Party conference. From gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Sat Jul 3 13:57:43 1999 From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Sat, 03 Jul 1999 16:57:43 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1169] NZ: Tariffs - article from The Independent Message-ID: >From The Independent Business Weekly, Auckland 30/06/99 Tariff report faulted for focusing on the positive Bob Edlin A study commissioned by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade has affirmed the obvious - tariff removal has cut the cost and increased the consumption of some goods. But the ministry's terms of reference excluded all other economic effects and some economists question the value of the findings. "If BERL had been asked to do the job, I would have refused to have accepted terms of reference that said we only had to look at the reduction in costs," said BERL co-founder Bryan Philpott, emeritus professor of economics at Victoria University. "I would have told them to go away and hire a junior clerk to do that." The report by the Institute of Economic Research was released last Friday by Prime Minister Jenny Shipley. The research was confined to the costs of just four consumer goods previously subject to high tariffs - cars, household appliances, shoes and clothes. Shipley at the launch nevertheless enthused about the employment and wage effects of removing import duties. "More New Zealanders have jobs than ever before and they are earning more than before - and all this over the same period that we, and Labour before us, have cut import taxes,"she said. Moreover, people were "getting a deal for each dollar they earn and spend." But the terms of reference had specifically steered the researchers away from employment, wage and other effects. The study found: * When prices at March 1998 were compared with levels that would have pertained if tariffs had been held at March 1987 rates, prices for cars were about 16% lower; household appliances about 9% lower, shoes about 5% lower; clothes about 15% lower. * Those price differentials were projected to allow for the complete phase-out of tariffs and lagged effects of tariff pass-through into domestic prices. Comparing prices projected to March 2010 with prices that would have pertained if tariffs had been held at March 1987 rates, prices for cars will be about 31% lower; household appliances about 16% lower; clothes about 34% lower. * These four items account for about 25% of total real household spending and tariff reductions enabled consumers to record a 7.3% gain in purchasing power by 1998. This will rise to 13.3% in 2006 and 14.1% in 2010. * In 1998, the average consumer gained $7.30 a week, or was about 4% better off as a result of the tariff cuts. Gains for the average household were $22 a week. * By 2010, the gain for the average consumer increases to $14.10 a week, making the average consumer about 8% better off. By then, the average household will have an extra $42 a week or $2,180 a year as a result of the tariff cuts on the four selected products. But Philpott challenges the worth of the study, contending that when economists want to study the effects on the economy of tariffs, exchange rates or any other policy instrument, "you must do it in a general equilibrium sense of looking at the whole economy and how it changes the real welfare of the populace," which is conventionally measured by the gross domestic product in real terms." Just looking at reduced prices "is rubbish," said Philpott. He took issue, too, with Shipley: "It's ridiculous to say we've got a situation approaching Nirvana simply because we took the tariffs off." He agreed many more cheaper goods were available, but this included many second-hand Japanese cars and it was equally true the quality of goods had deteriorated. Moreover, he said it was a well known assertion in economics that the results of free trade were very small, even under the best of assumptions. They probably were negligible or negative under realistic assumptions in which there was no appropriate exchange rate adjustment. Integrated Economic Services' John Lepper said prices were set interdependently with outputs in a market, "so you can't just look at prices in isolation from the effects on production." The ministry's study therefore was "a partial piece of work." Lepper said there were two important consequences of ignoring the effects of tariff rate changes on production. First, there was a wealth effect. When prices of assets like cars dropped, people holding those assets suffered a loss because their wealth was reduced. When they bought new cars, the trade-in value of their old car was much less than it used to be and the financial difference they had to make up had increased, making it harder than before to buy a new car. Second, there were employment and other effects on local communities affected by tariff reductions, such as South Auckland, Porirua, Upper Hutt and Levin. Welfare dependency increased and people were trapped by falling house prices so they couldn't afford to move elsewhere to find another job. Whole communities had no hope and no new avenues for their energies. Rising crime, suicide and so on were the inevitable result. Those problems were well established in economic literature and must be taken into account to judge if the effects of tariff change on a society were good, bad or indifferent. From gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Sat Jul 3 14:42:31 1999 From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Sat, 03 Jul 1999 17:42:31 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1170] NZ: WTO To Job - NZ Herald 29/06/99 Message-ID: NZ Herald, Auckland, 29/06/99 Job-share may end deadlock for Moore By Warren Gamble A compromise being brokered in Auckland for the deadlocked top job at the World Trade Organisation could see New Zealand's Mike Moore taking turns in the post with his Thai rival, Dr Supachai Panitchpakdi. The term-sharing arrangement, mooted in the past, is reemerging as a frontrunner to break the lengthy stalemate for the director-general's position of the powerful trade body. The Australian Deputy Prime Minister, Tim Fischer, is believed to be behind the push at the Auckland meeting of Apec Trade Ministers this week. Last night, a spokesman for the New Zealand Minister of International Trade, Lockwood Smith, said the proposal would be looked at seriously, and could offer a way through the impasse. The compromise could see both men serving terms of several years. Former Prime Minister Mr Moore is likely to prefer holding the post first to oversee the crucial millennium trade negotiating round due to be launched at November's WTO meeting in Seattle. Since arriving in Auckland on Sunday, Dr Supachai has for the first time publicly signalled support for the proposal. He said yesterday that if WTO members agreed to such a concept he would be happy to be part of it. Mr Fischer would not talk about specific, saying he wanted to "see these proposals work." He would look for a "fair circuit-breaker" during informal talks with other Apec delegations over the next two days. If there was wide agreement, it would be taken to the WTO council in Geneva, which is scheduled to meet again to consider the dispute in the next week or two. The organisation has traditionally elected its leader by consensus. Australia has supported Dr Supachai for the job, saying before Mr Moore entered the race its understanding was the next director-general would come from a lesser-developed country. Mr Moore's most powerful supporter, the United States, significantly would not rule out considering a term-sharing arrangement yesterday. Mr Moore was refusing any comment yesterday, saying it would cause too much confusion, but is understood to be continuing behind-the-scenes lobbying in Auckland. _______________________________________________________________________ Contenders work their corners in silent tussle by Warren Gamble In the home corner for the world trade leadership, Mike Moore, who said nothing. In the visitor's corner, Thailand's Supachai Panitchpakdi, who said slightly more, but earned a new nickname: :"Dr Super-dry". The marathon tussle for the director-generalship of the World Trade Organisation moved to Auckland yesterday, but the two contenders never got close to sparring. Instead they were working their respective supporters' camps, mostly behind the scenes, except for one unusually public meeting between the Thai Deputy Prime Minister and his Australian counterpart and old friend, Tim Fischer. The two met by chance in front of the world's media in the fishbowl mezzanine floor of the Carlton Hotel, and quickly adjourned to the bracing climate of an outdoor balcony. Reporters tried to interpret their animated gesticulations - were they talking about a new way to break the impasse or where to find a good lamb dinner? Doorstopped by journalists afterwards, Dr Supachai confirmed he would not pull out of the race, but gave more weight to a potential compromise which would see him and Mr Moore sharing the position. Then he was back into an Apec seminar, where the WTO job is strictly off the agenda. Although he was not quite in the speaking form international reports said had sent some of a distinguished Swiss audience to sleep recently, the "superdry" name seemed to fit by the end of his address. Mr Moore, seen courting Asian officials at another city hotel, had no hesitation when asked if he had a minute to talk: "You won't need a minute because I'm not saying anything," he said, adding that he wanted to avoid confusion during this week's Apec Trade Minister's meetings. From gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Sat Jul 3 15:09:48 1999 From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Sat, 03 Jul 1999 18:09:48 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1171] APEC in NZ: Dissident loses bid to rein in police Message-ID: <2uuTaF1w165w@corso.ch.planet.gen.nz> NZ Herald, 29 June 1999, Auckland Dissident loses bid to rein in police A Chilean dissident who claimed he was being harassed by police targeting Apec threats has lost his bid for a landmark restraining order. Esteban Espinoza launched the court action - the first against the police under the Harassment Act 1997 - after Malcolm Jones, a detective from Auckland police's threat assessment unit, visited his mother's and his own home last year. Detective Jones said he visited Mr Espinoza, president of the Auckland Latin American Community, to build a rapport with the immigrant community ahead of Apec, the America's Cup and other events. Mr Espinoza, who campaigned against the former Chilean regime of General Augusto Pinochet after his arrival here 18 years ago, said he felt intimidated and feared for the safety of his family after that and other brushes with police. However, Auckland District Court Judge Barry Morris ruled police had not harassed Mr Espinoza. "There has been no arbitrary interference by the police with his privacy, family and home," he said in a reserved decision. He added, however, that police could breach the Harassment Act, even though it was considered as anti-stalker legislation during parliamentary debates. Mr Espinoza's counsel, Brett Cunningham, said his client might appeal to the High Court. ___________________________________________________ Letters to the editor: letters@herald.co.nz From gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Sat Jul 3 15:25:05 1999 From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Sat, 03 Jul 1999 18:25:05 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1172] NZ: National Business Review on APEC Message-ID: National Business Review, July 2 1999 Business leaders cane Apec: too slow to cut too high tariffs By David Barber Regional business leaders this week made it clear Apec was not moving = fast enough for them in cutting=20 tariffs and removing other trade barriers. They said they were disappointed with progress and abdicating Apec=92s = tariff-cutting leadership role by=20 passing responsibility to the World Trade Organisation was costing = regional economies and consumers. Some Apec tariffs were still too high and WTO processes too slow, = business leaders told the ministers after=20 they passed on six more trade sectors they had earlier targeted for = early unilateral liberalisation to the world=20 body. Tariffs needed to be cut faster and Apec=92s target of 2003-2005 for = trade facilitation measures was too far=20 out, Comalco chief executive Kerry McDonald said. Although International Trade Minister Lockwood Smith claimed Apec was = back on track =93with a full head=20 of steam=94 after last year=92s near collapse in Kuala Lumpur, the = business community made it clear it was far=20 from convinced.=20 =93There=92s a genuine ambition to continue trade liberalisation but the = jury is still out on whether it can=20 deliver,=94 said Philip Burdon, former trade minister and chairman of = Apec=92s Business Advisory Group. He said the 21-member organisation, which accounts for nearly half of = all world trade, faced an enormous=20 challenge in meeting its declared targets of free trade by developed = countries in 2010 and for the=20 developing 10 years later. =93I am apprehensive to the extent that I will believe it when I see = it.=94 Developing country members reluctantly agreed to support a comprehensive = new WTO round although=20 they remain suspicious Apec=92s free trade agenda gives most of the = benefits to their more developed=20 colleagues. They backed the inclusion of industrial goods =96 essentially everything = but farm products and services,=20 where new negotiations were already guaranteed =96 because they = recognised Apec could not face the=20 European Union across the table looking anything but totally united and = committed. =93It=92s just not acceptable for anyone to say they are opposed to = trade liberalisation,=94 said one delegate. But the developing members demanded assurances they would make = substantial gains from the free trade=20 drive. They particularly want guarantees wealthier nations will = contribute more to their infrastructure=20 development and help lift their capacities in the new technological age. Mexico warned that most trade growth in the next 20 years would come = from developing countries and said=20 the new round=92s success depended on them being brought fully into the = international trading system. Editorial Believers give way to sceptics The Apec trade ministers who met in Auckland this week can be forgiven = for thinking they were akin to the=20 early Christians. All believe in the Messiah=92s coming but find = sceptics all around. Their John the Baptist=20 role was to set the scene for the Apec leaders=92 summit in September = and give a hefty jump-start to the next=20 world trade round in Seattle at the end of the year. But they were upstaged by other events over-shadowing their mission: the = US decision to impose barriers=20 against lamb imports and the failure of the World Trade Organisation to = agree on a leader. That the trade ministers still managed to cling to their mantra in their = final declaration is commendable. =20 But outsiders and businesspeople are right to be cynical of any = immediate outcome. Like the prophets of=20 earlier times, the free trade believers know their long established = principles =96 that open markets lead to=20 greater prosperity to all =96 is honoured more in words than deeds. The US decision against lamb imports, as explained by Professor = Richardson on the opposite page, is a=20 classic case of the political process delivering specific goods to a = defined group of voters at minimal=20 expense to the majority. President Clinton has wisely held off his final = decision until the trade summit is=20 over. But New Zealand=92s trade minister, Lockwood Smith, expects an = unfavourable outcome. It is just the kind=20 of decision that fuels the scepticism of unbelievers. One of the prophets at this week=92s gathering, Professor Jagdish = Bhagwati, urged the ministers not to accept=20 compromise in proseltysing the faith and to come up with more creative = proposals to overcome the=20 sceptics. His advice is worth taking but there was little evidence of = it. The biggest blow was the decision of Australia=92s admirable advocate, = Tim Fischer, to retire from his=20 leadership role for personal reasons. Dr Smith and Mike Moore still have an unenviable burden to carry in an = increasingly hostile world. Letters to the Editor: editor@nbr.co.nz From gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Sun Jul 4 14:16:40 1999 From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Sun, 04 Jul 1999 17:16:40 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1173] GATT Watchdog - Global Free Logging Agreement at WTO Message-ID: GATT Watchdog PO Box 1905 Otautahi (Christchurch) AOTEAROA (New Zealand) Fax 64 3 3668035 Ph 64 3 3662803 MEDIA RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE USE 4 July 1999 "Global Free Logging Agreement" Must Be Outed And Axed before November WTO Meeting - GATT Watchdog Wellington may not see eye to eye with Washington over lamb tariffs but the two governments are in cahoots in pushing for a global trade agreement to eliminate remaining tariffs on forest products - with dire consequences for the world's forests, says GATT Watchdog. GATT Watchdog organiser Aziz Choudry recently returned from an international meeting on forests and globalisation near Seattle, focusing on the upcoming World Trade Organisation (WTO) Ministerial Meeting and the launch of a new round of negotiations. Representatives of non-government organisations in the USA, Canada, Brazil, Chile, Indonesia, Russia, Japan and Europe met to discuss strategies about how to stop the agreement. "The New Zealand government can't see the woods for the trees on matters of trade and the environment. This forestry agreement is just one example of an extreme economic agenda which promotes trade liberalisation as an end in itself. It needs to be outed and axed," says Aziz Choudry. "US Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky has stated that completion of the wood products agreement is one of the USA's primary trade goals for the upcoming Ministerial. And Lockwood Smith has repeatedly argued that the liberalisation of trade in forestry and fish products is a high priority for New Zealand trade policy," he said. In April, GATT Watchdog sought, under the Official Information Act, documents relating to negotiations on the forestry agreement from MAF, MFAT and Ministry for the Environment. After demands for several thousand dollars for the information, the group has referred the matter to the Ombudsmen's Office for investigation and review. "This proposal, dubbed the 'Global Free Logging Agreement' by its opponents, is part of an eight sector Accelerated Tariff Liberalisation package which was shunted from APEC to the WTO after failure to reach consensus among APEC member countries. The agreement is scheduled for completion at the third Ministerial meeting of the WTO to be held in Seattle at the end of November. It is a declaration of intent to increase logging and further decimate forests around the world". Canada's government also supports the forestry agreement. But Japan, which wants to protect its domestic wood processing industries, has resisted the plan in APEC and is likely to do so at the WTO. Many developing countries seek a review of existing GATT/WTO agreements, and are wary of moves to introduce new issues. "The Accelerated Tariff Liberalisation (ATL) initiative aims to eliminate tariffs on all forest and paper products by the year 2000 for "developed" countries and 2003 for "developing" ones, increasing production and consumption of wood products. A US industry organisation, the American Forest and Paper Association says wood consumption could increase by 3 to 4% worldwide if tariffs come down". "The ATL reflects the global forestry industry's international trade agenda. And negotiations are likely to focus on the removal of non-tariff measures which may jeopardise environmental safeguards like eco-labelling, strong phytosanitary controls on imports of wood products that carry exotic pests - like the Asian gypsy moth - and pathogens, and regulations to promote local industries. Forest protection laws, labour and environmental regulations are viewed merely as obstacles for greater profit". "Anything a good corporate lawyer can say is a "trade barrier" could be targetted - like export bans on wood products from endangered forests, bans on the export of unprocessed logs. For the timber transnationals, decreasing production costs is the name of the game, regardless of the environmental or social consequences - let alone the rights of Indigenous Peoples to their territories and resources". "The timber transnationals seek to eliminate restrictions on where, when and how to log so production and profits increase. They want to open up world markets to forest products so more is sold and profits go up", he said. Proposed new Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI)-like provisions on investment at the WTO would also let overseas investors challenge any new government measures to protect forests or local forestry jobs. "New Zealand already has one of the most open investment regimes in the world. According to recent Overseas Investment Commission statistics, 68% of all land sales to overseas investors between 1991-97 was for forestry purposes," he said. "Neither the New Zealand government nor the Clinton Administration have conducted an environmental impact study on the proposed agreement, although the US Trade Representative's office and the Council on Environmental Quality have now agreed to conduct a very limited "economic and environmental analysis"". "Weyerhaeuser and International Paper, two out of the four key US timber transnational corporations which sit on Clinton's trade advisory committee, and have greatly influenced the drafting of this new agreement, operate in New Zealand. We have no doubt that the forestry giants are playing a similar role in shaping New Zealand's position going into the WTO Ministerial while everyone else is deliberately being kept in the dark," said Mr Choudry. For further comment, contact Aziz Choudry ph (03) 3662803 From gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Mon Jul 5 07:21:54 1999 From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Mon, 05 Jul 1999 10:21:54 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1174] WTO Leadership race Message-ID: <8iywaF2w165w@corso.ch.planet.gen.nz> From: The Dominion, July 2 1999, Wellington Reluctant WTO voters blamed By Andrea Fox RELUCTANCE by some World Trade Organisation member countries to vote has contributed to the "messiness" of the leadership standoff, Singapore's Trade Minister, Brigadier General George Yeo said yesterday. But a United States specialist in international trade, also visiting Wellington this week, believes the standoff between New Zealand's Mike Moore and Thailand's Supachai Panitchpakdi is a symptom of a serious split between the north and south of the world. Allan Mendelowitz, vice president of Washington's Economic Strategy Institute, said the WTO needed to address the split "directly and courageously" because it contributed to the Asian economic collapse. Both said the newness of the WTO was also a factor in the divisive and long-running leadership issue. A compromise seems likely with Mr Moore and Dr Supachai sharing the job, each serving three years. Singapore supported Dr Supachai and the United States backed Mr Moore. Brigadier Yeo, whose Government supports trade liberalisation and has an unrestricted, zero tariff import regime, said the reluctance to vote in the absence of consensus was for good reason. "...it is a complex and vigorous consensus process which is unqualified and not clearly defined , so occasionally [we get] this kind of messiness we now have. "But then if we have one man, one vote, then the poor economies would be disproportionately weakened and the result would be that wealthier countries may decide it's a process not worth being committed to." Dr Mendelowitz said one of the reasons for the 1997 Asian crash was because within the Gatt system there was a tolerance for "things we should not have been tolerant of". "That led to significant distortions that imposed great hardship on these countries and great hardships on workers in the developed world as well. It's not just an issue of whether Mr Moore is a better candidate than Dr Supachai but they in effect have become the champions for the different views of the world, and it does look like a north-south split." Brigadier Yeo said WTO was a new organisation so procedures had to evolve which were efficient, workable, and fair and which encouraged all member countries to join in. He thought Mr Moore and Dr Supachai sharing the job an attractive solution but he was not convinced it would work. "The issues have become charged with emotion," he said. "It's very sad we've got stuck in this position and that the atmosphere in Geneva should be poisoning this matter." Dr Mendelowitz said the WTO was a new institution of "great sensitivity". The agreements that had created it involved countries giving up peces of their national sovereignty. "At this very early formative stage every challenge to the effective functioning of the organisation is problematic...and the absence of a distinguished leader is problematic. "It challenges the vitality and credibility of the organisation. It's definitely a teething problem but it is emblematic of a deeper problem - the north and south split." The Dominion, Wellington, July 2 1999 Moore awaits offer to take helm of WTO By Victoria Main, Political Editor LABOUR MP Mike Moore has inched closer to taking up the world's top trade job with the United States' public endorsement of a compromise plan allowing for two consecutive terms of three to four years. Mr Moore, who is deemed the winner of the World Trade Organisation director-generalship , is awaiting a firm offer for him to take up the Geneva-based post first, before commencing himself to the proposal. Rival candidate Thai Deputy Prime Minister Supachai Panitchpakdi is willing to accept the idea of consecutive mandates, but has yet to say whether he would agree to serve second. Non-Asian developing countries will take some persuading that the Asia-Pacific region should have the post for up to eight years. It was reported from Washington yesterday that the United States was amenable to the proposal as a way of resolving the leadership impasse threatening the beginning of new multilateral trade talks at the WTO ministerial summit in November in Seattle. Asked if the United States could accept a shared leadership White House spokesman Jake Siewert said: "Oh, absolutely. We think it's important that this issue be resolved quickly in a way that reflects the will of the majority." Mr Moore won a ringing endorsement from German economic state secretary Lorenz Schomerus, who described him, at a trade seminar in Wellington, as "a communicator, a political innovative mind who is capable of communicating the messages which the new trade world of the new millennium will need". The European majority view was that Mr Moore was "an excellent candidate who will be able to lead us through the difficulties, through the maze of the new trading round", Dr Schomerus told the Institute of International Affairs forum. Mr Moore said the delay in filling the WTO post, vacant since April 30, was threatening its ability to reflect the world it represented. From sierra at vcn.bc.ca Mon Jul 5 10:14:33 1999 From: sierra at vcn.bc.ca (Sierra Club) Date: Sun, 4 Jul 1999 18:14:33 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [asia-apec 1175] Re: WTO Leadership race In-Reply-To: <8iywaF2w165w@corso.ch.planet.gen.nz> Message-ID: pls remove my address from your list i will be movung away sierra@vcn.bc.ca thanks l.p --------------------------------------------------------------------- Sierra Club Lower Mainland Group 1009 - 207 West Hastings Street Vancouver, British Columbia V6B 1H7 Phone: (604) 915 - 9600 Fax: (604) 915 - 9601 *** sierra@vcn.bc.ca http://www.sierraclub.ca/bc ***___ From gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Mon Jul 5 14:05:54 1999 From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Mon, 05 Jul 1999 17:05:54 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1176] Alternatives To The APEC Agenda Message-ID: 4 July 1999 PRELIMINARY NOTICE: Alternatives To The APEC Agenda Conference Organised by The Aotearoa/New Zealand APEC Monitoring Group Auckland, Aotearoa (New Zealand) September 10-12 1999 Sponsored by GATT Watchdog, CAFCA and the NZ Trade Union Federation Speakers include: Antonio Tujan, Executive Director, IBON Databank, Philippines Moses Havini, Bougainville Freedom Movement Sunera Thobani, Ruth Wynn Woodward Professor of Womens Studies, Simon Fraser University, BC, Canada Crispin Beltran, Chairman of Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU), Philippines Dr Jane Kelsey, Professor of Law, Auckland University, author of "The New Zealand Experiment" Moana Jackson, Ngati Kahungunu, Director of Nga Kaiwhakamarama i Nga Ture (Maori Legal Service) Annette Sykes, Ngati Pikiao, lawyer, Treaty of Waitangi Activist Robert Reid, International Officer, NZ Trade Union Federation Radha D'Souza, Asia Pacific Workers Solidarity Links Aziz Choudry, GATT Watchdog * * * * (Other local and international speakers to be confirmed) ___________________________________________________________________________ REGISTRATION: To receive registration pack for the forum please contact: notoapec@clear.net.nz Fax 64 9 846 3297 Updates to this initial posting, programme, and registration details will be posted on this listserve and at shortly Overseas registrations are limited to 40 places; local registrations to 140. Priority will be given to ensure a broad representation of sectors and community interests. From jaggi at vcn.bc.ca Mon Jul 5 20:28:36 1999 From: jaggi at vcn.bc.ca (Jaggi Singh) Date: Mon, 5 Jul 1999 04:28:36 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [asia-apec 1177] APEC Hearings Update 1/2 Message-ID: [1/2] Vancouver APEC Hearings Update (#2) June 30, 1999 [A previous APEC update was prepared three months ago on March 27, 1999. If you want a copy, just e-mail .] ------------------------------ This update includes the following sections: 1) The APEC ALERT raft theory [1/2] 2) Jean Carle's "15 minute warning" [1/2] 3) "Embarrassment from the Canadian definition" [2/2] 4) Chretien's cancelled tour and shredded documents [2/2] 5) An ambassador's view [2/2] 6) Sensitive matters [2/2] 7) Anarchists, socialists and "left-wingers" [2/2] ------------------------------ The "civilian" stage of the interminable APEC Hearings has ended, after hearing testimony from almost 40 witnesses over three months. The hearings will resume at the end of July with procedural motions on the calling of further civilians. The next batch of scheduled witnesses include senior administration officials from UBC, and then an assortment of federal government and senior RCMP officials and bureaucrats, including Jean Carle and Jean Pelletier from the Prime Minister's Office (PMO). Jean Chretien has still yet to be added to the witness list. Meanwhile Eddie Goldenberg, his chief aide, has been interviewed by Commission Counsel and they've decided not to call him. Chretien might be Canada's Prime Minister, but Goldenberg is widely acknowledged to be the most powerful person in Ottawa, and a key figure in understanding what the PMO did or didn't do during APEC in Vancouver. Here are some highlights from the last three months of testimony, as well as a preview of upcoming evidence: 1) The APEC ALERT raft theory Of the dozens of people arrested at the APEC Summit, not one person was ever brought to trial. Actually, with one exception, no one was ever charged with an offense. Of course, that hasn't prevented the RCMP and their high-priced lawyers from presenting all kinds of tenuous theories to try to justify their actions, or just plain discredit protesters. Probably the most far-fetched theory to date is the "APEC ALERT raft theory" which was introduced by Staff-Sergeant Stewart's personal lawyer, Jim Williams, during his cross-examination of Annette Muttray (June 16). Annette, a foreign grad student at UBC, was arrested for holding a walkie-talkie on November 25, 1997. Because of her visa status, Annette specifically wanted to avoid arrest, and was simply helping out protest organizers by using a walkie-talkie to report on an East Timor Alert Network demonstration. Nonetheless, as part of the RCMP's transparent tactic of eliminating the protesters' communications network, individuals with walkie-talkies and megaphones were targeted for arrest. For Annette's efforts, she was arrested, handcuffed, strip-searched and jailed, only to be released without charge later in the evening. Her arrest is among the most insidious of the dozens the RCMP undertook that day. That doesn't mean they don't have their excuses While questioning Annette at the Commission on June 16, an RCMP lawyer openly asked if she had a notebook in her possession during APEC with "codes for different locations on campus" and "plans to storm the beach by way of a rubber raft in order to gain access to the Museum of Anthropology." Another police officer, from the VPD, has told Commission Counsel that he saw a notebook with "what he thinks were codes, a list of locations, and a reference to arriving on the beach at the Museum of Anthropology in a rubber raft." The same officer, Constable Wrathall, says he gave the notebook to an RCMP officer who worked with Staff-Sergeant Stewart. Conveniently, Wrathall can't identify the officer to whom he gave the incriminating book. Even more conveniently, the RCMP have not been able to produce the notebook! That's not surprising, since no such notebook exists, as Annette emphatically testified. The lawyers for the Forces of Light, who've called the allegations "ludicrous", have more-or-less dared the RCMP to produce the non-existent book. Now, just because APEC ALERT never considered making a Normandy-style beach landing, that doesn't mean the raft theory wasn't a good idea. I wish I thought of it. Imagine ... an affinity group of about half-a-dozen APEC ALERTers, carefully hidden away in the deep forest of Stanley Park on the eve of the Summit, surreptitiously finalizing their plans. At dawn, they launch their rubber raft - the "HMS Freedom", or something similarly nave and earnest - and set off with determination across the cold waters of the Burrard Inlet. Carefully avoiding the scrutiny of scary US Navy frogmen, Canadian coast guard boats and probing helicopters, the rafters make a secret landing on Wreck Beach, the infamous nude beach colony on the UBC campus. After planting a black flag, the activists tiptoe around the sleeping diehard hippie nudists, and commence to scale the steep cliff towards the Museum. Miraculously avoiding plunging to their deaths off the near vertical cliff, the protesters elude the security agents of more than a dozen countries by hiding behind totem poles, and proceed to enter the Museum through a back door. The sweaty anarchist rafters rudely interrupt a pompous speech by the Prime Minister of Thailand on tariff policy, and promptly proceed to put all the leaders under summary arrest. Chretien resists, but is eventually subdued with a moderate dose of diluted pepper-spray. Now that would have been much more interesting than allegedly tearing down some stupid security fence attached with twist ties - the proverbial thin line between civilization and anarchy. As it stands, there was no raft, no secret codes and no notebook. That doesn't mean the RCMP can't lie about it. 2) Jean Carle's 15-minute warning The Commission has recently produced a "will says" of their interview with Jean Carle, Prime Minister Jean Chretien's Director of Operations during APEC. [A "will says" is a document produced by Commission Counsel after an interview with a given witness, and summarizes what the witness "will say" at the Commission.] Jean Carle, according to the will says, admits that on November 25 he was personally present at Gate 3 during APEC ALERT's blockades of all the main exits from UBC. He was also present when Staff-Sergeant Stewart and other senior officers were discussing how to handle the situation. He claims that "he was not involved in those discussions." However, Carle does admit that he "told the RCMP officers to give him a cue as to when they could leave." Moreover, he was supposed to give the RCMP "a 15 minute warning before the time for departure." Carle's warning, coming directly from the Prime Minister's Director of Operations, might help explain Staff-Sergeant Stewart's brutal actions at the Gate 6 blockade. Captured on television footage that has now become infamous across Canada, Stewart gave demonstrators a 9-second warning before letting loose with Liberal doses of pepper spray. Within minutes, the leaders' motorcades sped by while some arrested protesters, handcuffed in the back of police van and drenched in pepper spray, were screaming in pain for first aid. They had to wait over up to 30 minutes until all the motorcades went by to receive treatment. Why the rush? Couldn't Carle, Chretien and the APEC Leaders have waited for a few more minutes so that protesters who continued to blockade Gate 6 could be arrested and dragged away in a somewhat civil manner instead of blasted with chemical mace? Here is Carle's explanation: "While Mr. Carle could have advised the Prime Minister to delay, there were problems associated with this. For example, President Clinton had another commitment and had to get to the airport. Other leaders may have had similar problems." So, the key to Peppergate?: Clinton had a flight to catch. [End of 1/2. Continued ...] From jaggi at vcn.bc.ca Mon Jul 5 20:29:37 1999 From: jaggi at vcn.bc.ca (Jaggi Singh) Date: Mon, 5 Jul 1999 04:29:37 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [asia-apec 1178] APEC Hearings Update 2/2 Message-ID: [2/2. Part 1 includes an introduction to this APEC Hearing Update. For a previous Update written three months ago, e-mail jaggi@tao.ca] 3) "Embarrassment from the Canadian definition" Jean Carle's "will says" also makes references to the Indonesian government's concerns about protests. Carle tells Commission Counsel that "demonstrations are part of Canadian folklore." Carle also points out that "the Indonesian definition of embarrassment is different from ours. From their perspective, they did not want to see any demonstrations." Well, while the Indonesian government may not have wanted to see demonstrations, the Canadian government also had its own definitions. Carle admits that on August 27, 1997 (three months before the Summit) he made a site visit. Carle was concerned about "sound penetrating the walls where the Leaders were meeting" as well as the location of the security perimeter (which was eventually moved back, in violation of an agreement between the government and UBC). This is what the "will says" has to say about Carle's views on sound: "At that point [August 27], he was concerned about sound, which would have constituted embarrassment from the Canadian definition. Mr. Carle wanted to push back the demonstration area along Gate 4, which was across Marine Drive from the Museum of Anthropology." So, for future reference, here are two international embarrassment parameters: Indonesian government: don't like seeing protesters Canadian government: don't like hearing protesters Together, the Indonesian and Canadian definitions made for a "free-speech free" APEC Summit. Suddenly, the confiscating of megaphones makes a lot of sense. 4) Chretien's cancelled tour and shredded documents Carle's "will says" has other interesting tidbits. For example, Prime Minister Chretien was supposed to make a site visit to the Museum before the Leader's Summit. However, our seniormost politician cancelled the important tour because of the anti-APEC tent city protests organized by APEC ALERT. According to Carle, "the Prime Minister's office did not want to provoke anyone and that was the reason for the cancellation." Carle's "will says" also reveals that "he was briefed several times by the RCMP on threat assessments. He was privy to intelligence documents and understood that all assessments were low or moderate." Conveniently, Carle "did not take notes", and he either threw out or shredded all APEC-related documents. He claims that nothing that was destroyed was an original document. 5) An ambassador's view The Commission has also provided the "will says" for Gary Smith, Canada's ambassador to Indonesia from September 1996 to June 1998. In the document, Canada's policy regarding Indonesia's security concerns is abundantly clear: "Mr. Smith will say that it was a policy objective of Canada to get President Suharto to attend APEC. It was important for them that he be there. Everyone understood this within the Canadian government." The "will says" goes on to outline all the extraordinary efforts made by Canadian diplomatic officials to appease Suharto, including Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy's letter to the Indonesian government apologizing for the actions of Canadian protesters. 6) Sensitive matters One of the more interesting testimonies at the RCMP Public Complaints was by Karen Pearlston (June 17). She was a grad student in law at UBC during APEC, and a resident of Green College which fell within the security red zone set up by the RCMP. On the Saturday before the Leaders' Summit (four full days before the meeting), she attempted to place some anti-APEC posters on the security fence that was put up outside her residence. She was immediately stopped by about five officers. Being a law student, Karen demanded to know on what legal basis the officers could remove signs. She was told by one officer, "[I]t was on orders from the Prime Minister's Office that there should be no signs and no people on that side of the street." At the Commission, before Karen could even testify what the officer told her directly, she was immediately interrupted by the head government lawyer, Ivan Whitehall, QC. He made a tenuous argument that it was not permissible for the witness to continue testifying on what she was told by someone else. Whitehall was ruled out of order, and Karen was able to put her conversation with the police on the record. Again he objected, due to the "sensitive nature" of her comments. As an experienced lawyer, Whitehall knew his objection was silly, and proceeded to defend himself by saying his "intervention was a cautionary one." If anyone thinks that Karen's account of her conversation with the police is an after-the-fact embellishment, she happened to write and widely distribute an e-mail about the entire incident the same day (4 days before Spraypec on November 25). Not surprisingly, Whitehall again unsuccessfully objected to having this key piece of evidence admitted on-the-record. Karen's testimony and e-mail provides a clear link to the PMO's involvement in the removal of signs at UBC (aside from the reams of incriminating documents that have already been revealed to the media). 7) Anarchists, socialists and "left-wingers" Interestingly, another government lawyer, Simon Fothergill, aggressively cross-examined Garth Mullins on his political beliefs, although Simon seems to need a refresher a course in political science 101, as shown by this exchange (June 2): Fothergill: Am I right in thinking that you're also a member of the International Socialists? Garth Mullins: I have been, am not currently. Fothergill: I see. Would it be accurate to describe the International Socialists as an anarchist group? Garth Mullins: No. Fothergill: All right. Have you been involved in anarchist activism? ... and on and on about Garth's political background. The members of the Democracy Street lawsuit group who have had a public profile, like Garth, have experienced some of the most aggressive cross-examination from the RCMP and government lawyers at the Commission. Alissa Westergard-Thorpe in particular had to endure hours of questions from three separate hostile lawyers. Democracy Street was formed by a diverse group of people weeks after APEC, most of whom did not know each other before November 25. The government lawyers were definitely trying to imply, however, that there might have been some sort of activist conspiracy at work before Democracy Street even existed (another one of the RCMP's far-fetched theories). Meanwhile, Commission Counsel has been trying hard to establish some sort of leadership hierarchy to APEC ALERT. What follows is one of the more humorous exchanges at a usually humorless Commission. Jamie Doucette, who was arrested along with Annette for having a walkie-talkie, was being questioned by Barbara Fisher for the Commission (June 5): Jamie Doucette: The nature of APEC Alert organizing of, I guess, direct democratic organizing in general, is that everyone has an organizational role. It's -- operates on principles of affinity, that -- it's like a road hockey game. You pick a spot and, you know, this person brings this, this person brings that, and you sort of discuss how it's going to take shape. It's nothing really more complicated than that, but you can't say that there's a certain leader or a certain authority. Question: So you might not have been the team captain, but what position did you play? Jamie Doucette: Left wing. This update is already too long, so if you want to know everything that's been happening at the Commission, the transcripts can be accessed online at http://www.tscript.com (that's how I wrote most of this report). For more information about the APEC Hearings, e-mail either jaggi@tao.ca or jono@physics.ubc.ca. [End of 2/2. Written by Jaggi Singh.] From rreid at actrix.gen.nz Tue Jul 6 12:38:24 1999 From: rreid at actrix.gen.nz (Robert Reid) Date: Tue, 6 Jul 1999 15:38:24 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1179] Re: Alternatives To The APEC Agenda Message-ID: <199907060347.PAA19620@mail.actrix.gen.nz> this looks much more interesting Love M ---------- > From: Gatt Watchdog > To: asia-apec@jca.ax.apc.org > Cc: jaggi@tao.ca; shniad@sfu.ca > Subject: [asia-apec 1176] Alternatives To The APEC Agenda > Date: Monday, 5 July 1999 17:05 > > > > 4 July 1999 > > PRELIMINARY NOTICE: > > > Alternatives To The APEC Agenda Conference > > Organised by The Aotearoa/New Zealand APEC Monitoring Group > > Auckland, Aotearoa (New Zealand) > > September 10-12 1999 > > Sponsored by GATT Watchdog, CAFCA and the NZ Trade Union Federation > > Speakers include: > > Antonio Tujan, Executive Director, IBON Databank, Philippines > > Moses Havini, Bougainville Freedom Movement > > Sunera Thobani, Ruth Wynn Woodward Professor of Womens Studies, Simon > Fraser University, BC, Canada > > Crispin Beltran, Chairman of Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU), Philippines > > Dr Jane Kelsey, Professor of Law, Auckland University, author of "The New > Zealand Experiment" > > Moana Jackson, Ngati Kahungunu, Director of Nga Kaiwhakamarama i Nga Ture > (Maori Legal Service) > > Annette Sykes, Ngati Pikiao, lawyer, Treaty of Waitangi Activist > > Robert Reid, International Officer, NZ Trade Union Federation > > Radha D'Souza, Asia Pacific Workers Solidarity Links > > Aziz Choudry, GATT Watchdog > * * * * > (Other local and international speakers to be confirmed) > ___________________________________________________________________________ > REGISTRATION: > > To receive registration pack for the forum please contact: > > notoapec@clear.net.nz > > Fax 64 9 846 3297 > > Updates to this initial posting, programme, and registration details will be > posted on this listserve and at shortly > > Overseas registrations are limited to 40 places; local > registrations to 140. Priority will be given to ensure a broad > representation of sectors and community interests. From gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Tue Jul 6 15:33:19 1999 From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Tue, 06 Jul 1999 18:33:19 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1180] APEC Monitoring Group on Today's SIS Court Ruling Message-ID: <9XFZaF3w165w@corso.ch.planet.gen.nz> MEDIA RELEASE FROM AOTEAROA/NEW ZEALAND APEC MONITORING GROUP FOR IMMEDIATE USE 6 JULY 1999 Opponents of the APEC forum were concerned and disappointed at the Court of Appeal judgement in the Choudry case released today. Four of the five judges have ruled that the SIS (Security Intelligence Service) does not have to participate in full disclosure to the High Court of documents relating to their illegal break-in of Mr Choudry's house during a 1996 APEC Trade Ministers Meeting in Christchurch. The judges ruled that a certificate provided by Prime Minister Jenny Shipley saying the release of the documents will prejudice national security, an "ongoing security concern" and relate to an "operational matter" is sufficient reason to prevent the High Court judge in the case from reviewing the documents. The APEC Monitoring Group agrees with dissenting Court of Appeal Justice Thomas that this ruling effectively gives the SIS and the Prime Minister protection from any real scrutiny of their activities and allows them to use the "mantra of national security" to keep secret from public and judicial view any information they deem to be prejudicial to their activities. "This judgement is particularly disturbing coming as it does in the year New Zealand hosts the APEC forum. The government has already shown its willingness to break the law when it comes to opponents of APEC and its free trade agenda. Given the extreme measures the government has been willing to employ to avoid explaining the activities of the SIS during the 1996 APEC Trade Ministers meeting any assurance given that opponents of APEC in 1999 will have their right to dissent protected and respected can only be treated with suspicion and contempt", said spokesperson Leigh Cookson. Harassment of APEC opponents has already begun with SIS and Police Threat Assessment Unit officers visiting the homes and workplaces of people from migrant communities. There is real concern that the presence of officials and leaders of the 21 APEC nations in New Zealand will be used by the National government as an excuse to harass and spy on the opponents of its free market economic ideology. "If as this judgement seems to suggest Jenny Shipley and the SIS are totally unaccountable to Parliament, the judiciary and the New Zealand public then we should be afraid, be very afraid" said Leigh Cookson. Contact: Leigh Cookson (APEC Monitoring Group) 03 3662803 From gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Tue Jul 6 16:41:34 1999 From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Tue, 06 Jul 1999 19:41:34 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1181] NZ Media on APEC trade ministers meet Message-ID: several articles here >From New Zealand Herald, Auckland, 30/06/99 Glimpse of big gains for NZ on horizon By John Armstrong and Warren Gamble Apec trade ministers have glossed over their differences regarding tariff cuts by shunting the sensitive subject off to world trade talks, thus avoiding another credibility-eroding scrap. An afternoon retreat at the exclusive Gulf Harbour country Club ended with ministers putting on a show of unity by reaching a broad consensus on what should be discussed at the world talks later this year. They agreed to support industrial products being included on the World Trade Organisation agenda, widening the negotiations from simply agriculture and services. The deal avoided any detail over which range of goods and services should be given priority when the talks begin in Seattle in November. But more bickering over how fast to cut tariffs would have further crippled the regional trade grouping's credibility following the feuding at last year's summit in Kuala Lumpur. Getting industrial products on the agenda at the WTO could have a big payoff for New Zealand in the long term. Other countries - particularly the Europeans - would find it easier to trade off cuts in agricultural barriers in return for lower tariffs on their manufactured exports. Under WTO rules fishing and forestry are classed as industrial goods, providing a potentially huge boost through more open access for New Zealand exports. However, any tariff reductions are likely to still be years off. The Minister for International Trade, Lockwood Smith - who is chairing this week's trade ministers meeting in Auckland - described the consensus as a global breakthrough. Although Apec's voice has now been added to calls for a wide-ranging WTO round, the G8 grouping of world industrial powers, including Apec members Japan and the United States, had already reached that position. Despite that, Dr Smith pronounced Apec had moved a big step forward. Australian Deputy Prime Minister Tim Fischer echoed the mood, saying the meeting had got off to a flying start. Another plus was that the ministers had agreed the coming WTO round should be completed within three years. However, the time limit may be optimistic given that the last world trade negotiations took nearly twice that period. The meeting also agreed to send the final six of 15 sectors identified in an Apec initiative for early tariff reductions on to the WTO. Dr Smith's buoyancy followed earlier signs that the two-day meeting might have become bogged down over reluctance by individual member countries to move on specific tariff cuts ahead of the Seattle meeting. Analysts will have to wait until the release of the meeting's communique today to judge whether Dr Smith's enthusiasm at his post-retreat news conference matches the feelings of other countries. Editorial, New Zealand Herald, Auckland, 30 June 1999 Do us all a favour Free trade is not a phrase that wins popular applause, and no wonder when a representative of the world's foremost trading nation presents its openness as a favour to the world. United States Deputy Trade Representative Richard Fisher attempts to excuse imminent levies on New Zealand-Australian lamb imports with the reminder that the vast American economy has carried the world through the Asian crisis. He is right, as far as he goes. But nothing does more harm to the public view of free trade than the suggestion it is a one-way benefit. Trade between individuals, companies and countries benefits both sides; it does not happen unless both buyer and seller gain something each desires. If that is obvious in transactions between individuals and companies, why is it not as obvious when trade crosses national boundaries? Because it is only then that politics comes into play. Politicians, who for the most part know very well that trade multiplies wealth overall, are cast in the role of commercial negotiators. In forums like that in Auckland this week, Governments deal in offers and concessions as though they were giving away something from sheer national generosity. It is all a bargaining pose, just as a canny individual or company representative will feign agony over the fairest of prices. Whatever success the pose may have in private transactions, it has a powerful influence on public trade policy. Comments such as those of the United States envoy can only reinforce the myth that free trade is a favour and that New Zealanders are "mugs," in the word of Alliance leader Jim Anderton, to be offering other countries so much unfettered access to this tiny market. The mug is Mr Anderton if he belives a country of this size has more to gain by protective bargaining than by embracing world prices and promoting maximum trade at every opportunity. It is easier to recognise the benefits of external trade from the vantage point of a small economy than it is in the United States. But even there, it ought not be impossible to acquaint voters with the fact that they are doing themselves a favour in buying from abroad. The United States did not carry the world through the recent crisis out of kindness. Its own interests were indistinguishable from those of the global economy. Those entrusted with the monetary and trade levers in New York and Washington did not see much future in a fortress of internal prosperity. They have been less successful of late against the sectional interests that are always seeking protection, as New Zealand lamb exporters seem certain to learn. But Mr Fisher is right that exceptions should not be mistaken for the rule. Protectionism is not resurgent. The occasional setbacks for trade liberalisation of late are patently not accompanied by a chane in political philosophy. They are accompanied instead by sorry excuses from foot-shuffling officials and lame politicians who do not pretend to be acting from any sort of principle. The progress of Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation might not be much advanced when the trade ministers' meeting concludes in Auckland today because the prospect of a larger initiative looms in the World Trade Organisation. That's politics, a poor way to trade. __________________________ New Zealand Herald, 2 July 1999 Moore the performer preaches Apec gospel to the converted By Brian Fallow WELLINGTON - It was a bravura performance. Mike moore's passionate defence of free trade yesterday may have been an exercise in preaching to the converted - the diplomats and scholars attending the Institute of International Affairs symposium on free trade in the new millenium. But the contrast in syle between Mr Moore and his rival for the leadership of the World Trade Organisation, Dr Supachai Panitchpakdi, could not be starker. Dr Supachai, who may well be as committed a free trader as Mr Moore, was in Auckland this week for the Apec trade ministers meeting. The dessicated, technocratic style which has won him the nickname "Dr Super-dry" was on display, ironically, at a seminar on bridging the gap, that is, communicating the benefits of trade liberalisation to a sceptical or indifferent public. Mr Moore was resolutely unforthcoming yesterday about the impasse over the WTO director-general's job or the proposal to resolve it by splitting the term between him and Dr Supachai. No-commenting was a new and rather liberating experience, he said. His speech was an ardent defence of free trade, not just as economically sound or politically liberating, but as the best hope of the worst-off. "In many countries, including my own, there are an increasing number of citizens who feel locked out, forgotten, angry and hurt, believing falsely that globalisation is the cause of all their problems. They sit waiting for a train that may never come, their faces pressed against the window, easy victims to old and dangerous songs that yesterday was better." While most countries had seen incomes rise, the gap between haves and have-nots had also risen. "People are appalled and dismayed when they see the few living in splendour and the many in squalor, with half the world dieting and the other half starving. They are not impressed by being told that on average they are better off than before." But this was not the fault of the world trading system. It was an argument for making it fairer and stronger. "Those countries that have liberalised have done the best and we ought to say so," he said. "The point is not that the global economy is somehow perfect or that the widening range of public concerns are without substance or validity. The point, rather, is that the challenges we face can only realistically be addressed inside this global system. "If people, especially young people, say that unemployment is too high, they are right. If environmentalists say that growth must be sustainable and not destroy the planet's essential equilibrium, they are right. When developing countries say they are not getting fair access and justice, they are right." But none of those problems would be resolved any more easily by restricting trade, closing borders or undermining the rule of law as embodied by the WTO. Just the opposite. Mr Moore argued for a more integrated approach to trade and development so that countries could take advantage of open markets, bridging the "false separation" between the work of the WTO and other world bodies like the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Many smaller countries were in effect excluded by being unable to afford to have representatives in Geneva, or just overwhelmed by the technical details and thousands of pieces of paper. Equipping smaller economies with the technical and research capacity they needed in order to engage in the WTO negotiating process could not wait. "That's the downpayment they want now, this year." From gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Wed Jul 7 05:55:43 1999 From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Wed, 07 Jul 1999 08:55:43 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1182] NZ: APEC/Security Message-ID: >From The Press, Christchurch, July 7 1999 (website Letters to the editor (150 words max, include full postal address ) Court declines SIS disclosure by Martin van Beynen The Court of Appeal has stepped back from inspecting Security Intelligence Service documents relating to a bungled break-in of a Christchurch activist's home. Anti-free trade activist Aziz Choudry had applied for 70 SIS documents to pursue a court claim against the SIS for the break-in on July 13, 1996. Last December, the Court of Appeal said the Prime Minister (the Minister in charge of the SIS) would need to provide more information on why she believed the documents should attract immunity before it could rule on Mr Choudry's application. The court said the break-in was illegal because the SIS had acted outside its powers. Having considered a new certificate prepared by the Prime Minister, four of the five sitting judges yesterday ruled the court should defer to her view that disclosure would be contrary to national security. Judges did not have the expertise or necessary information to say otherwise, they said. Judges would have no way of knowing whether a document that looked harmless might be a crucial piece in a jigsaw that could jeopardise national security. Mr Choudry said yesterday he was naturally disappointed with the ruling, although the judgment was on a preliminary question in the case and his claim for $300,000 against the SIS would go ahead. He was concerned the judgment appeared to put the Prime Minister above the law. "It's particularly worrying the Government is still cleaning up this bungle from 1996 in a year when it is hosting the Apec forum," he said. In a hard-hitting dissenting judgment, Justice Thomas said the court should at least inspect the documents sought by Mr Choudry. To accept the Prime Minister's certificate gave the court sufficient information to weigh up the competing interests "is for the court to succumb to a convenient pretence," he said. The majority appeared to suggest judges were not competent to assess the sensitivity of the documents but that the "nuances and intuitive deductions" which were part of covert intelligence could be quickly grasped by the Minister. It was not difficult to perceive that the Minister would be heavily dependent on the SIS and therefore lacking in objectivity. Once it was accepted trust in the certificate was in reality trust in SIS, the judicial trust seemed "strangely out of place", he said. "In effect it confers on the SIS such immunity as it chooses to claim free from the constraints of any form of effective scrutiny," he said. From gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Wed Jul 7 12:14:10 1999 From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Wed, 07 Jul 1999 15:14:10 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1183] Anne Else paper on globalisation Message-ID: Subject: Fairy Tales from the Global Marketplace "And we all live happily ever after": Fairy Tales from the Global Marketplace presented at Beware the Miss-leaders: Women's Conference against APEC, Wellington, 19-20 June Anne Else, 1999 Here in Aotearoa New Zealand in 1999, we've been listening to the fairytales of the global marketplace for fifteen years. For some of us, they are the only tales we know. Young women now entering university started school the year New Zealand's first big global storyteller became Minister of Finance. Of course, like all fairy tales, these tales change shape as they move around the world. But the basic outlines stay the same.=20 The global marketplace is a thoroughly Western concept, so these tales are of course based on Western myths and traditions. What are these tales are trying to teach us about how to run our lives and our countries? 1.Mothers and stepmothers are to blame for everything bad that happens to poor children. If they run out of bread, lose their way in the woods or get hooked on candy, it's never the father's or the king's fault. 2.Poor boys with big bullying older brothers can make it to the top and marry a wealthy princess. All they have to do is work hard enough, travel far enough away from home, and do exactly what they're told without arguing. 3.Poor girls with nasty rich older sisters will get to go to a ball and marry a wealthy prince. All they have to do is work all day and all night, be sweet and kind to everyone who orders them around, always try to look their best, and do exactly what they're told without complaining. 4.Shaggy beasts and slimy frogs are really kings and princes in disguise. They may look ugly, sound stupid, and act like cruel tyrants, but they know what they're doing. They're just testing you. Love and obey them and their true worth will be revealed. 5.Old women are really evil witches who have the power to blight the land. If you are too kind to them, they will hold the peasants to ransom, steal the bread from children's mouths, and keep the country poor. They must be made to stand on their own two feet and not bludge off the rest of us. 6.If a strange man suddenly wakes you up and tells you he is a brave prince who has just rescued you from a spell cast by a wicked witch disguised as a kindly old granny, believe him - and help him chop down all those old roses. He knows what's good for you and your garden. 7.If an ugly old woman builds you a high tower to live in and says it's to keep you safe from greedy foreign raiders, don't believe her. She's really a wicked witch. When a charming foreigner comes along, let him climb up your hair. It may hurt at the time, but once he's inside you'll be much better off. He will set you free and bring you lots of wonderful overseas gifts. 8.Witches are always bad, but wizards are always good. They have awesome and unlimited powers. Not only can they turn frogs into princes. They can turn one old sheep into hundreds of young sheep. They can turn cow's milk into medicine and toads into potatoes. But never try to ask them any questions about what they're doing. Ordinary people are much too stupid to understand the answers. Besides, they might get angry and turn you into a homeless beggar. 9.Look around your town or village. If you find that where there were once many ordinary people living in ordinary houses, there are now a few wealthy people living in palaces and lots of poor people living in hovels, it's a sure sign that everything is going according to plan. A happy ending is just around the corner. =A0 How do these lessons get put across? The same way as the original fairy tales - by repeating them day in and day out, in hundreds of different places - newspapers, magazines, books, films, TV, radio, Parliament, government departments, private organisations.=20 Make no mistake - these are powerful tales, and they have strong appeal. If we are to combat them, we need to understand what that appeal is. They work so well with so many people so much of the time because they seem to offer: simplicity - everyone in the world is fundamentally the same and everything can be neatly sorted out according to rules. One size can and should fit all cultures and communities. individualism - the primacy of the individual in a crowded, homogenising, mass-culture world. The more the free market is forced on us, and the less genuine freedom we have, the more individualism becomes a religion. order - the rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate. It's a nice tidy straightforward world, with no such thing as power or social structures or coercion. self-reliance - it's all up to you in this New Age, and you should focus on self rather than others. You are in control of your own destiny, and you don't need to look out for anyone else.=20 fairness - you get your just deserts, life is what you make of it, the rules operate the same for everyone. This appeal is very powerful in NZ and the US. It's the colonial dream come back to life - honest industry will prosper in a new land. taking away guilt - removal of responsibility for others and for the ills of the world generally. If people aren't making it, it's their fault. Anyway, that's just the way things are - the poor are always with you, so why bother to try to change things? hope - everyone can do well if they follow the rules and work hard. If he is clever enough and works hard enough, any little boy can become Bill Gates. Any little girl can become a princess, a Spice Girl - or the Prime Minister. =A0 Finally, the fairy tales of the global marketplace offer us: new heroes - the rich, who are just the same as everyone else, except that they have better ideas and work harder; new scapegoats - sole mothers, dole bludgers, ACC claimants, greedy pensioners, bureaucrats, tax collectors, or simply those hordes of poor people overseas who take our jobs; a new devil - the wicked witch of the state, telling us what we can and can't do, stealing our money and handing it out to those who refuse to help themselves - she has to be cut down to size, or preferably done away with altogether (a strange echo of Marxism here!); a new god to look up to - the market as a benevolent, wise, all-knowing allocator of this world's goods - invisible, omnipotent, impersonal, scientific, rational, incapable of getting it wrong, provided it is left alone and not interfered with, not even by democracy. =A0 Another reason that these fairy tales work is that they were well timed. New Right theories, like all others, were historically developed. They were successfully introduced to New Zealand at a time when it was becoming obvious that the traditional Pakeha consensus no longer worked in some important ways, and major change was urgently required.=20 But now there are plenty of clear indications that the new prescription is not working either. It is particularly not working for women and children. We know this is so in the so-called Third World. But the New Right prescription does not work even in the so-called First World.=20 Acknowledgement of this is now coming from unlikely quarters, and New Zealand is being held up as a prime example of failure. John Gray, Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics, writes: "The New Zealand experiment is the free-market project in laboratory conditions: uncompromising neo-liberal ideology animated a programme of radical reform in which no major social institution was left untouched....In New Zealand, the theories of the American New Right achieved a rare and curious feat - self-refutation by their practical application....New Zealand has experienced an astonishing growth in economic inequalities of all kinds."(False Dawn: the delusions of global capitalism, Granta, 1998, pp.39,42.) Unemployment and benefit cuts are of course partly to blame. But not everyone is unemployed or on a benefit. Most people who do have jobs are working longer and harder than they did fifteen years ago, for little or no gain. Where is the money going, if it's not going to New Zealanders? Basically, it's going to a handful of elite managers, or it's leaving the country. The National Business Review - a paper not known for its left wing views - has just run an article attacking one example of how this export of earnings is being achieved: transfer pricing. What is transfer pricing? It is a classic enrichment ploy by multinationals. They make their subsidiaries in other countries pay inflated prices for goods or services supplied by the overseas parent companies. This helps to bring more money home and also helps to avoid tax. For example, "Multinational companies are siphoning cash from their NZ subsidiaries through inflated management fees - three years after strict laws were introduced to stop the practice." Last year, for example, Grey Advertising "handed over $595.000 on group income of $4.5 million and reported a loss." (NBR 18/6/99, p.1.) Some other headlines that have appeared recently in our press give a stronger taste than statistics do of the brave new world brought about by the global reach of the New Right: "2000 new callers a year to gambling helpline." (Dominion 28/9/98) "NZ health slammed by OECD...access to health care has deteriorated...substantial waste of resources." (Sunday Star=A0Times=A06/6/9= 9) "Teens seek sex work in capital...girls as young as 16...high demand for teenage girls in the sex industry...Thai sex slaves offered for sale in Wellington." (Evening Post 10/6/99) And from overseas: "Septic sludge put in animal feed, French report finds."(Dominion 11/6/99) "Russian life expectancy falls from 65 to 57...the lowest in the developed world." (Sunday Star=A0Times=A023/3/99) "Plague rat makes comeback in Britain." (Sunday Star=A0Times=A020/12/98) And finally, for those who don't care about sex slaves or plague rats, as long as the finances look good: "Balance of payments deficit impedes economic recovery" "1.9% of GDP at start of recovery, 6% now...external sector performing pitifully...country's net financial worth put at minus $89.5 billion and set to drop." (National=A0Business=A0Review=A018/6/99 p.14) These are the global market's huge and increasingly obvious feet of clay. No matter what the theory says, in practice - the practice of human life - it becomes obvious remarkably quickly, even in a relatively lucky country like New Zealand, that a global free market is simply not sustainable in any sense of the word. It cannot sustain either ecosystems or social systems.=20 In fact, globalised markets are so anarchic that they cannot even sustain financial systems. "Anarchic global markets destroy old capitalisms and spawn new ones, while subjecting all to unceasing instability." (Gray, 1998, p.216)=20 Human beings simply cannot live for long in conditions of such constant instability and insecurity. These conditions are inexorably spreading. Globalisation does not limit itself neatly to Coke and Nike, or confine its collateral damage to the Third World. Poverty and misery on this scale in one part of the city, or the country, or the world, will inevitably affect the whole. Americans know this: they have been in thrall to the free market since Reagan. Already, 28 million Americans, or one in ten of the entire population, live in gated communities or buildings guarded by private security forces. (Gray=A01998, p.116.) In 1995 a baby born in New York, in= the heart of the most materially wealthy society the world has ever known, was more likely to die in its first year, less likely to learn how to read, and could expect to die two years earlier, than a baby born in Shanghai. (Gray=A01998) The fairy tales of the global market are even less relevant to life in the 21st century than the old fairy tales. But once in place, they're hard to dislodge, even when real life constantly shows them up as lies. The important question is, how are they to be replaced? I have no easy answers, any more than you have. All I know is that the current state of things cannot last. One way or another, change will come. The only question is, who will control it. I have time here to put up just one idea. I believe women are on the whole much better placed to push for humanly and environmentally sustainable change, and to write the new sustaining stories to go with it, than men are. This is because most women have never been utterly convinced of the virtues of capitalism in general, let alone the New Right version. They have a concept of work which does not arise from or depend on capitalist economic concepts. Instead it centres on the work of producing the future and preserving the past. This is obviously a kind of work which simply cannot be shifted to the market, or to the state either, without completely altering what it means to be human. But this kind of work cannot continue to be done in the kind of world being forced on us by the New Right.=20 Women are much more likely to understand this than men are. But now demographers and politicians and even a few businesspeople are belatedly coming to understand it too. They are realising that many women in the industrialised world are now voting with their wombs. Women have responded to the enormous difficulties of combining paid market work and unpaid reproductive work, as well as the increasing unlikelihood of getting long-term support from men, by delaying or forgoing child-bearing, to a point well below replacement level. What happens to women who go against the logic of the brave new right world and persist in clearly "irrational" child-bearing just rams the lesson home. In colonialist societies such as New Zealand, population growth has underpinned and symbolised every other form of growth. It has been taken for granted, just as infinite natural resources have been.=20 Now the most fundamental form of growth known to industrialised nation states over the last 200 years is going into reverse, with age predominating instead of youth. We've all seen the dire warnings about the costs of an ageing population. The fact that among the old, women outnumber men, seems to make the spectre of ageing much worse as far as the New Right are concerned. Today anxious articles are starting to appear about how women might be persuaded to have more children. (One strongly suspects, though it is never actually stated, that only babies of the right colour are wanted.) But the overall downward birth trend is very unlikely to alter; demographers make much more robust predictions than anything economists come up with. I believe we can use this fundamental shift to focus on what sustainability really means - not just in terms of population, but in social and ecological terms generally. But it can also be used to focus on the importance of equity and justice - sustainability for all, on a global scale. Because in the end, we know there can be no other kind. http://www.geocities.com/Wellesley/Garden/9441/AnneElse/19990620againstAPEC. html From apcjp at igc.apc.org Thu Jul 8 01:02:38 1999 From: apcjp at igc.apc.org (Asia Pacific Center for Justice and Peace) Date: Wed, 7 Jul 1999 09:02:38 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [asia-apec 1184] Does APEC Make a Sound if No One is Listening? Message-ID: <2.2.16.19990707120431.465ff1e4@pop2.igc.org> Does APEC Make a Sound if No One is Listening? The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC) will be meeting in New Zealand next week. It is not clear why they are going to bother. Nothing of substance will be decided and little of importance will be discussed. That is pretty amazing considering that just a few years ago APEC was the focus of tremendous interest and attention and each of its meetings, at whatever level, was greeted with anticipation and tension, as diplomats maneuvered to promote their country's views and interests. How the mighty have fallen. With the collapse of Asia, we have seen the collapse of nonsense about "The Asian Century." In fact, no one is expecting very much from Asia, beyond the hope that it recovers to a decent degree. Therefore, it follows that the importance of the Pacific Rim, which was going to dwarf the European basin in significance, is on hold. APEC, the organization that was to institutionalize the Pacific Rim, has been rendered irrelevant. Indeed, the main topic on the APEC agenda is not going to have to do with APEC at all. It will have to do with maneuvering for the leadership of the World Trade Organization (WTO), an entity whose own significance is increasingly dubious. It was, in fact, made clear that nothing of substance was going to come out of APEC this time around. Contentious issues, like U.S. and New Zealand opposition to Japanese trade restriction on forestry products and fish are going to be marginalized, and U.S. lamb quotas will similarly be dealt with off on the side. Normal, pious platitudes to free trade will be delivered, but the weaker Asian countries are going to have nothing to do with them, although they will undoubtedly propose a that a study be done. Preparations will be made for an APEC summit in Vancouver. APEC has become an arena of meaninglessness. Indeed, it has become an arena where minor tensions can easily be exacerbated. There is little point in discussing problems that are insoluble unless the purpose is to increase tensions. Frankly, from what we can see, APEC doesn't have the energy to increase tensions anyway. It is a dinosaur, a leftover fantasy from an era that was supposed to become permanent but proved fleeting indeed. The real issues in the region are bilateral. The multilateral approach assumes a commonality of condition and interest that is no longer present. Everybody on the Pacific Rim once assumed that they shared a common interest in managing exploding economic interconnectivity. Today, apart from Asian Internet providers complaining about the unbalanced tariff structure that favors the U.S., there are few dynamic sinews left. It is not that there is no trade in the region. It is that the region has lost its dynamism and that no one is looking at that regional trade as the engine driving the world's future. It is not that no one cares. It is only that so few care that it might as well be no one. fwd from www.stratfor.com by Paul Gonsalves Bangalore, India + 91 80 525 4054 asfute@vsnl.com http://members.xoom.com/asfute ************************************************************** Asia Pacific Center for Justice and Peace 110 Maryland Avenue, N.E. Box 70 Washington, D.C. 20002 Tel: 202-543-1094 Fax: 202-546-5103 E-Mail: apcjp@igc.org Web: www.apcjp.org From gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Thu Jul 8 08:21:19 1999 From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Thu, 08 Jul 1999 11:21:19 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1185] West Papua Message-ID: <90k3aF4w165w@corso.ch.planet.gen.nz> Title -- 2207 WEST PAPUA: Bloody killings continue, says OPM man Date -- 7 July 1999 Byline -- Press release Origin -- Pasifik Nius Source -- John O. Ondawame/OPM, 7/7/99 Status -- Unabridged ------------------- OPM press Release * See Nius item 2205. BLOODY KILLINGS BY INDONESIAN FORCES CONTINUE, AS REGIME TURNS BLIND EYE SYDNEY, Australia: "New killings and mass arrests of 44 civilians who participated in a peaceful flag raising ceremony by joint Indonesian police and military forces, in Soronga [West Papua/Irian Jaya] on 5 July 1999, was a criminal act against humanity. "We condemn such crimes and urge the Government of Indonesia to release them immediately. We also call on the Government of Australia and the international community to intervene and take all necessary measures to ensure their safety and also to prevent any further escalation of civilian disasters,a and social and political unrest," said Otto Ondawame, international spokesperson for the OPM in Sydney. Four hundred soldiers of a "joint forces" opened gunfire on the crowd indiscriminately and pulled down the flag which had been raised by the people. Considerable numbers of the crowd were seriously injured. "Marthen Isir is in a critical condition having been shot in the head. He isa under intensive medical care in public hospital with little hope of recovery. The lives ofa those 140a now detained in the police custody in Sorong are our serious concern." says Mr. Ondawame "We are very worried about the fate of these innocent civilians. We do not want the history of the Biak massacre one year ago and massacres in other parts of West Papua to be repeated at a time of peace dialogue and democratic process. We call on the Government of Indonesia to allow independent human rights organisations, including health personnel to have access to monitor their conditions", said Otto Ondawame. The general situation in the city is nowa very tense. Main roads in the city area closed to the public and tightly controlled by the security forces. New curfews have already been put in place since yesterday as well as searching for the suspected members of the OPM. All shops in the city were closed down yesterday. People are afraid to go out and there is difficulty in getting basic needs. "We hope this was not a result of an orchestrated event as in other cases of destabilisation so that the Papuan suffer deprivation of basic necessities. If these conditions continue for more than a few days, it may lead to a new "worst scenario". It may not only generate new waves of social and political unrest, but also discredit the peace initiative that is presently being undertaken by the Forum for Reconciliation of the people of West Papua (FORERI) with the Government of Indonesia" said Otto Ondawame. Further information, please contact John O. Ondawame 61 2 9960 1698 (home) ora 9950 3674 (Office) +++niuswire This document is for educational and research use only. Recipients should seek permission from the copyright source before reprinting. PASIFIK NIUS service is provided by the niusedita via the Journalism Program, University of the South Pacific. Please acknowledge Pasifik Nius: niusedita@pactok.net.au http://www.usp.ac.fj/journ/nius/index.html From alarm at pacific.net.hk Thu Jul 8 11:40:53 1999 From: alarm at pacific.net.hk (ALARM) Date: Thu, 08 Jul 1999 10:40:53 +0800 Subject: [asia-apec 1186] New Kid on APEC Block Message-ID: <4.0.1.19990708103810.00e11280@pc02> Vietnam: New Kid On APEC Block No Stranger To $(C(BThe Market$(D(B (This introductory article has drawn heavily from Gerard Greenfield$B(Bs excellent papers on Vietnam) Behind the entry of Vietnam into APEC is a story of restructuring, labor rights violations, starvation wages, appalling health and safety measures, export processing zones, and transnational corporations like Nike, Samsung, and Daewoo, for example, taking advantage of $(C(Bcheap labor$(D(B. Open-air labor markets made up of hundreds of thousands of day laborers hoping for a meagre day$B(Bs pay are to be found on the edge of major towns and cities. Is this what they mean by $(C(Bflexibility$(D(B of the labor market? The neoliberal reforms in Vietnam tell a familiar tale of massive joblosses, deregulation, and a widening gap between rich and poor and the fightback by militant workers against exploitation and greed. The government is nominally Communist, but politicians and their advisors use the same sort of neoliberal rhetoric used to sell the market economic model by governments the world over. Short-term sacrifice for long-term benefits. Empty promises of skilled jobs and technology transfer even as the country is used as a dumping ground for outdated machinery and equipment which can$B(Bt be used anywhere else. The justification of downward revision of national labor laws and regulations in the name of labor $(C(Bflexibility$(D(B. This, it seems is the development of a $(C(Bmarket economy with a socialist orientation$(D(B, as it has been described. One leading economic advisor to the government, Nguyen Khac Hien, says: $(C(BThe market and market economy are the common achievement of human civilisation. The market came into existence before capitalism, and continues to exist in and after capitalism$(D(B. Sound familiar? According to an April 1999 review of World Bank data, with the exception of rice (Vietnam is the second largest exporter of rice after Thailand), prices for its major exports since 1985 have fallen consistently and look set to continue to decline in the future. Gabriel Kolko writes: $(C(BGiven the huge world excess overcapacity in processing and industry, Vietnam cannot diversify its exports away from commodities. By persisting with a strategy of export-led development, as the IMF and World Bank insists it does, Vietnam is aggravating the social problems it has created since 1986 with a fundamentally flawed economic strategy that will not solve the compounded problems in its society and economy. This is a sure recipe for a crisis in the very near future.$(D(B Meanwhile, the Asian Development Bank$B(Bs 1998 Annual Report had this to say: $(C(BWhile Vietnam continued to develop the legal and regulatory frameworks that are needed for the functioning of the private sector and of a market economy, such reforms can be further accelerated. Further liberalization, transparency, accountability, and streamlining of procedures will be needed to attract foreign investment$(D(B. The ADB also called for restructuring the banking sector and pushing on with the process of $(C(Bequitization and divestiture$(D(B of State Owned Enterprises. And the ADB provided a policy-based loan in support of the Vietnamese Government$B(Bs Agriculture Sector Program which has focused on trade liberalization in input and output markets. And what of the workers? In 1989, the $(C(Bsmall shock therapy$(D(B saw over a million workers in the state sector lose their jobs, under the Surplus Labour Redistribution Programme, along with wage reductions and the introduction of piece-rate wages and individual wage incentives. State farms and rural cooperatives collapsed. These policies gave managers the power to slash the workforce by whatever number was deemed necessary to become profitable. Between 1989 and 1995, the number of state-owned enterprises declined from 12500 to 4000. Meanwhile many state-owned enterprises and assets, and farm lands have been appropriated by the domestic elite bureaucrats, Party officials and military officers. Directors of state-owned coal companies have made massive private profits from operating illegal $(C(Bbandit$(D(B mines, notorious for their high rate of accidents and deaths among the desperate workers who earn only a small fraction of the wages of state sector miners, while undercutting the collective power of state sector miners by hollowing out production. By 1998, 350,000 workers were employed in 41 Export Processing Zones or Industrial Zones. Since early 1997 the government had allowed 100% foreign-owned EPZs. In both EPZs and IZs there is very little state regulation conditions are made as appealing as possible in order to attract foreign investment. Life for the workers in the zones often young women from rural areas- is characterised by a militarised, brutal production regime for the benefit of a partnership between the Party-State elite and overseas capital. In spite of the repressive atmosphere of the Zones, and often no thanks to the closely Party-aligned union officials, widespread strikes have been occurring against exploitation and labor rights violations. Verbal and physical abuse by management, forced (unpaid) overtime, punitive fines for being caught going to the toilet or resting have been commonplace. July 1997 saw the introduction of the compulsory labor scheme which requires all male workers between the ages of 18 and 45 to $(C(Bdonate$(D(B their labor to the construction of roads, highways, bridges and Industrial Zones for several days a year without pay. These infrastructural projects mostly World Bank of Japanese Government-funded, are primarily for the benefit of local and international capital. The wealthy can opt out of the scheme by making a donation to the state. By 1998 there were over 10 million workers unemployed in Vietnam. Many thousands of workers in foreign-invested factories have been laid off as East and Southeast Asian companies sink deeper into financial crisis. Garments and footwear workers, where South Korean and Taiwanese companies are the main investors, have been very badly hit. The Korean-owned garment factory, Juan Viet Co. sacked 2000 workers in the last quarter of 1997, and another 500 were dismissed at the start of 1998. Bankruptcies of companies have led to lay-offs and failure to pay wages and bonuses in many instances. Bankrupted foreign companies like the South Korean Ssangyong Corp., have sued state-owned banks and state enterprises in Vietnam for millions of dollars owed in overdue letters of credit. Meanwhile, as production costs in other SouthEast Asian countries spiralled downwards as the economic crisis continued, pressure to cut costs has come down hard on Vietnamese workers and their workplaces. The crisis is being literally passed on to workers employed through subcontracting networks, a web of small and medium enterprises through wage freezes, withheld bonuses, and a reduction in working days with a commensurate cut in pay. Although the Labour Code which came into effect in January 1995 requires 150% overtime pay and 200% on holidays and Sundays, many workers have found themselves severely underpaid and unpaid. Company directors have refused to sign collecftive bargaining agreements which are required under the Labour Code. Many foreign companies and joint ventures have blocked workers from organising trade unions. And where unions have been formed, many are controlled by management. The code recognises the right to strike yet in essence striking has been criminalised. That is to say that the requirements of the law on strikes and Party decrees state that almost two months of arbitration and negotiations with employers or state enterprise managers should be undertaken before any action by workers is possible. The arbitration process itself is weighted in favour of employers and managers, and prioritises economic growth and national interests over justice for workers. Any strike may be stopped by order of the Prime Minister, and strikes are not allowed in strategic industries. With the failure of official trade unions in many cases to respond to workers$B(B demands for genuine representation, Vietnam has seen a recent growth in popular $(C(Blabour associations$(D(B in many sectors. These grassroots$B(B workers organisations have sprung up in the absence of official union assistance and sometimes in direct confrontation with them. Perhaps the World Bank$B(Bs 1995 report on Vietnam best exemplifies how multilateral institutions and the agencies for global capital have denied the reality of Vietnamese workers. It praises how workers in the private sector are hired on short-term contracts to $(C(Bmaintain employee motivation and to minimise problems in releasing workers if need be$(D(B. Though there were nearly 200 strikes involving workers in foreign-invested factories in Vietnam by 1995 with many cases of unpaid wages, unfair wage deductions, forced overtime, beatings, verbal abuse, corporal punishment, sexual harassment, and rape, the World Bank report stated that there was: $(C(Bno evidence of abusive labour practices or unsatisfactory working conditions.$(D(B ================================== ALARM Project c/o Asia Monitor Resource Center 444 Nathan Road, 8-B, Yaumatei Kowloon, Hong Kong Tel: (852) 2332-1346 Fax: (852) 2385-5319 E-mail: alarm@pacific.net.hk / amrc@pacific.net.hk URL: http://home.pacific.net.hk/~amrc ================================== From alarm at pacific.net.hk Thu Jul 8 11:56:38 1999 From: alarm at pacific.net.hk (ALARM) Date: Thu, 08 Jul 1999 10:56:38 +0800 Subject: [asia-apec 1187] APEC Materials Message-ID: <4.0.1.19990708104110.00e0ebe0@pc02> Check out the following articles at http://home.pacific.net.hk/~amrc I. On APEC a. Vietnam: New Kid on APEC Block b. Peru: Fighting Fujimori's Freemarket Fundamentalism c. Past issues of the ALARM Update II. Globalisation and labour laws articles covering countries from Australia, Philippines, Thailand, Japan, Macau, etc. III. Check other APEC monitoring sites a) Aotearoa/NZ APEC Monitoring Group http://www.apec.gen.nz b) APEC Alert http://www.cs.ubc.ca/spider/fuller/apec_alert/ ================================== ALARM Project c/o Asia Monitor Resource Center 444 Nathan Road, 8-B, Yaumatei Kowloon, Hong Kong Tel: (852) 2332-1346 Fax: (852) 2385-5319 E-mail: alarm@pacific.net.hk / amrc@pacific.net.hk URL: http://home.pacific.net.hk/~amrc ================================== From gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Thu Jul 8 17:44:34 1999 From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Thu, 08 Jul 1999 20:44:34 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1188] APEC Trade Ministers Meeting - NZ media Message-ID: New Zealand Herald July 1 1999 Is Apec back on track, or is the trade talkfest merely hot air? Political editor JOHN ARMSTRONG looks at this week's Trade Ministers' meeting in Auckland. [Photos: GRIN DOCTOR: Lockwood Smith's enthusiasm for the Apec ministers' consensus led him to describe it as "a global breakthough" which has put Apec "back on track with a full head of steam." EASY RIDER: Philippines Secretary of Trade and Industry Jose Pardo ride in a golf cart during the Apec retreat at the Gulf Harbour Country Club.] Worthy noises conceal delays "A wonderful mood." "You could not get a more cohesive, friendly bunch of ministers." "Apec's now back on track with a full head of steam=85" Beneath the relentless spin from the loquacious Lockwood Smith lurks one question - has New Zealand's trade minister really restored momentum to Apec after last year's dummy-spitting in Kuala Lumpur? The American delegation at this week's trade ministers meeting complimented the chairman on having a grin "that can light up the darkest of rooms". But Dr Smith can sometimes let his enthusiasm get the better of him, leading him into the trap of claiming victory in defeat. He did that at the last Apec summit in Malaysia, where everyone could see the Japanese had put the kybosh on faster tariff cuts on fish and forest products - two of New Zealand's main exports. That disagreement was shunted off to the Geneva-based World Trade Organisation, which will start the so-called "millennium round" of trade talks in Seattle this year. The dispute placed a big query over Apec's relevance, particularly as the 21-member Pacific Rim bloc appeared to fragment in the face of its first real crisis, the Asian financial turmoil. When the going got tough, the problem was packed off to Geneva. Cynics say the same thing happened in Auckland this week. Getting momentum on a list of products known as the "back six" - oilseeds, food, rubber, fertiliser, civil aircraft and automobiles - was always going to be tricky after Kuala Lumpur, and plenty of pre-meeting mumblings were heard from countries reluctant to accelerate tariff cuts. Once again, the problem was dispatched to the WTO. Apec trade ministers agreed - and this is being hyped as the week's coup - to embrace all such "industrials" in the WTO round rather than stick to the existing agriculture and services agenda. The ministers also imposed a three-year deadline on a completing the new round. Some deadline. The last negotiating round began in the mid-1980s and took seven years. The new one will require more haggling and more trade-offs. In short, the trade ministers made worthy noises; the nitty-gritty has been postponed to another day. Free trade optimists would argue "so what". Long term, New Zealand stands to gain the most from lowering protectionist barriers because it faces higher average tariffs on its main exports. Even better the definition of "industrials" includes fish and forest products. Getting half the world's economy - Apec's membership - to agree on the broad scope of the talks should provide the weight to push things through the WTO labyrinth. And what happens at the WTO is binding on its 130-plus members, while Apec's goals are voluntary. The cynics say all this pre-Seattle positioning would have happened without Apec, because the WTO is now where the action will be. And the wording of last night's communique was weak compared to the pro-liberalisation language New Zealand uses when it speaks for itself. Long-time Apec watcher Philip Burdon, who gave ministers a hurry up during a session with business leaders, summed it up: "The jury's out." But officials will leave Auckland happy their careful pre-meeting diplomacy produced a more co-operative mood, clearing the air after Kuala Lumpur and getting the mood right for the far more important leaders' summit, now only 11 weeks away. Kuala Lumpur did another thing - it shook Apec's complacency. Ministers realise they must do a much better job of selling the benefits of trade liberalisation, especially when recession hits. Politicians find the mantra of "trade means jobs and trade liberalisation means extra jobs" doesn't resonate when existing jobs are under threat. "Perceptions about liberalisation are often distorted because the substantial benefits of liberalisation are widely dispersed whereas the adjustment costs are localised and more visible," ministers admitted in their communique. The communique amazingly then pleads for the elimination of jargon - the curse of all complicated trade negotiations - and suggests Apec's communication efforts should "focus on things directly relevant to people's experience". Such language has not been heard before. The need for plain talking was stressed by Australia's irrepressible Tim Fischer, who cited the mouth-watering example of the "Filipino coconut pie." Deleagtes licked their lips at his description of this taste sensation, imports of which posed a threat to Australian confectioners. The point of his story was that the pies were pumped full of export sugar from Queensland's cane farms. It was win-win for Australia's consumers and producers. But he warned that free-trade advocates struggled to win the trade liberalisation war when "every radio talk-back jockey from Dallas to Darwin" is beating a protectionist drum. Neither does it help when the United States, a supposedly-ardent free trade advocate, imposes tariffs on other free-traders, to the point of snubbing an Australian and New Zealand financial offer to expand the tiny north American lamb market to everyone's advantage. But are openness and "transparency" really possible in Apec deliberations? As one observer noted, the conundrum is that national interest during high-stakes negotiations dictates that countries keep their cards close to their chest for as long as possible. Last night's end-of-meeting press conference was evidence of that. The effusive Dr Smith, his country having already cut tariffs to the bone, said a lot His Apec colleagues, notably the Japanese and Chinese ministers, said very little. What they said "Our job is to consume." America's Deputy Trade Representative Richard Fisher on how the supposedly protectionist United States has saved Asian economies from deep recession. "We need to put a human face on trade." Richard Fisher on the need for Apec to escape the jargon of trade negotiations. "Perceptions about liberalisation are often distorted because the substantial benefits of liberalisation are widely dispersed." Trade ministers admit in their communique that selling tariff cuts is not easy. "Rethink the role and involvement of the media in Apec meetings." A business leaders communique deplores Apec's closed-door delibeations. "Tariffs equal taxes." Australia's Tim Fisher puts the trade liberalisation message in simple= terms. From ngls at undp.org Fri Jul 9 05:24:28 1999 From: ngls at undp.org (UN-NGLS (NY Office)) Date: Thu, 8 Jul 1999 20:24:28 +0000 Subject: [asia-apec 1189] NGO Registration to attend Seattle WTO Ministerial Conference Message-ID: <199907090014.UAA20419@nygate.undp.org> For those NGOs interested in NGO accreditatioin to the WTO Ministerial Conference in Seattle, please see the information below which describes the necessary procedure. You may also wish to visit the WTO website at , and click on "Non-Governmental Organizations". ______________________________________________________________ NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS FACILITIES PROVIDED TO ATTEND THE THIRD WTO MINISTERIAL CONFERENCE As time is running and representatives from Non Governmental Organizations need to prepare for their attendance at the third Ministerial Conference of the WTO to be held in Seattle from 30 November to 3 December 1999, WTO Members have agreed on 15 June 1999 to renew the same procedures for registration adopted for the two previous Ministerial Conferences held in Singapore (December 1996) and in Geneva (May 1998). Applications from NGOs to be registered will be accepted on the basis of ArticleV, paragraph2 of the WTO Agreement, i.e. such NGOs "concerned with matters related to those of the WTO". When addressing their request for registration to attend the Seattle Ministerial Conference, NGOs have to supply in detail all the necessary information showing how they are concerned with matters related to those of the WTO. To speed up the process for those NGOs who have been duly registered for and attended one of the following meetings: previous Ministerial Conferences (Singapore '96, Geneva '98) or the Symposia organized by the Secretariat in March 1999, their requests can be accompanied only by a shorter presentation of their activities and how they relate to those of the WTO. The reference of the meeting for which they have been granted registration and attended has to be mentioned. Requests for registration accompanied by the presentation of the NGO activities have to be sent by mail before 16August 1999 to: External Relations Division Centre William Rappard 154 rue de Lausanne 1211 Geneva 21 Switzerland Please note that all registration forms are numbered and cannot be copied. They should be returned by mail with all the information requested and recent passport size photos attached to the External Relations Division as soon as possible and in any case not later than 15 September 1999. Incomplete requests will not be accepted. Confirmation of registration will be sent to NGOs as from 1 October 1999 after the list of NGOs having requested registration has been circulated to WTO Members. Upon confirmation of registration, badges will be made available in Seattle for entrance to the Plenary Sessions, entrance to the NGO Conference Centre, where facilities will be provided to all registered NGOs and participation in social events. Observer status for international IGOs at the Seattle Ministerial Conference WTO Members have agreed on 15 June to invite International Intergovernmental Organizations (IGOs) as observers to the third WTO Ministerial Conference to be held in Seattle from 30November to 3December 1999 on the basis of the same guidelines adopted for the two previous Ministerial Conferences (Singapore '96 and Geneva '98): (a) organizations that are observers to the General Council will be automatically invited; (b) organizations that are observers to subsidiary bodies will be invited if they request to attend; and (c) consultations will be held to determine which other organizations that are not observers to the WTO and that request attendance at the Ministerial Conference should be invited. As provided in the Rules of Procedure for observer status of IGOs "if for any one-year period after the date of the grant of observer status, there has been no attendance by the observer organization, such status shall cease. In the case of sessions of the Ministerial Conference, this period shall be two years". Pursuant to this provision all organizations which have attended the Singapore and the Geneva Ministerial Conferences will upon request automatically be granted observer status at the 1999 Seattle Ministerial Conference. . From gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Fri Jul 9 15:48:12 1999 From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Fri, 09 Jul 1999 18:48:12 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1190] NZ/APEC: Activist not backing down Message-ID: <2m15aF5w165w@corso.ch.planet.gen.nz> Christchurch Star, Friday July 9 1999 Activist not backing down By Marianne Betts A ground-breaking case against the Security Intelligence Service will continue, despite a ruling from the Court of Appeal to keep documents relating to the bungled break-in of a Christchurch activist's home secret. Aziz Choudry, who is suing the SIS for $300,000 after a break-in at his Sockburn home three years ago, during the Apec Trade Ministers meeting, said he would continue with his civil case regardless of the ruling. "I won't back down on this and will have to see where we will go from here," Mr Choudry said. He said he had asked the court to review 60 secret documents relating to the botched break-in which the SIS had refused to disclose. Four of the five judges ruled the SIS did not have to disclose these documents and that a certificate by Prime Minister Jenny Shipley saying their release would prejudice national security was sufficient to prevent the High Court judge in the case from reviewing the documents. Mr Choudry said he was disappointed by the judgement, which would fuel anxieties about the service. The Apec Monitoring Group, of which Mr Choudry is part, feared the judgement gave the SIS and the Prime Minister protection from any real scrutiny of their activities and allowed them to keep secret information they deemed to be prejudicial to their activities. Spokesperson for the group Leigh Cookson said the judgement was disturbing, coming in the year New Zealand is to host the Apec forum. "Any assurance given that the opponents of Apec in 1999 will have their right to dissent respected can only be treated with suspicion and contempt," Ms Cookson said. The majority decision from four of the five judges said the judicial inspection of the documents would be unlikely to advance matters responsibly. Justice Thomas disagreed, saying national security would suffer. From gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Sat Jul 10 12:27:04 1999 From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Sat, 10 Jul 1999 15:27:04 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1191] APEC/NZ: Lamb protest farmer: They'll lock me up Message-ID: The Dominion, Wellington, July 10 1999 Lamb protest farmer: They'll lock me up By Helen Bain Political Reporter A MARLBOROUGH farmer who plans to lead a tractor protest to the Apec leaders meeting in Auckland in September says police have told him he will be locked up for the duration of the meeting. Andrew Barker, who planned an convoy of tractors and stock trucks to protest against the decision by United States President Bill Clinton to place a 9 percent tariff on New Zealand lamb, said Blenheim police told him about the lockup. "I have been told by police that they will arrest me and put me in jail for three weeks because I am a threat to the security of Apec," he said. "They have made it very clear to me that I won't be reaching Auckland." Mr Barker said he had support from several farmers who wanted to join the protest, but would not say how many. He said farmers' tractors with front-end loaders could shift any police roadblocks, and he has said an aircraft pilot had offered to "dump whatever is necessary" on delegates at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum meeting. He said his protest would be peaceful, but farmers had to "stand up and say enough was enough". Blenheim police said they could not comment on Mr Barker's claims till the town's police inspector returned on Monday. However they said the law would enable police to detain anyone perceived as a security threat, citing the case of Christopher Lewis, who tried to shoot the Queen in 1981. Police tracked Lewis during later Royal visits and detained him when the Queen was in New Zealand for a Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting. Mr Barker's allegation follows reports earlier this year that the Security Intelligence Service was monitoring immigrant groups in the leadup to Apec. His protest has the backing of Marlborough Federated Farmers, whose president, John Shand, has suggested he might join Mr Barker with a bulldozer. But at national level the federation urged a peaceful approach to getting farmers' concerns heard by Mr Clinton. President MalcolmBailey said farmers were angry about the tariffs, but they did not support a call by Labour agriculture spokesman Jim Sutton for Mr Clinton to stay away from Apec. Mr Bailey said farmers should encourage Mr Clinton to come to Apec so they could show him the error of his ways - but unruly protests were probably not the best way to do it. The federation would be "more than happy" to show Mr Clinton around New Zealand sheep farms to demonstrate to him the efficiencies that United States sheep farmers were lacking, Mr Bailey said. "Farmers are very angry, but we have to think how we can use that anger most constructively - we'd rather use the power of persuasion." Labour leader Helen Clark said she did not agree with Mr Sutton that Mr Clinton should stay away from Apec, but she did support his view that Mr Clinton "would not exactly be welcome". "Of course [Mr Clinton] should come to Apec - he is the leader of the most powerful economy in Apec," Miss Clark said. She would not be disciplining Mr Sutton over his comments. "I think Jim is speaking for the heartland, for his constituency, which feels passionately about this," she said. Letters to Editor: letters@dominion.co.nz From fingal at cyberus.ca Sat Jul 10 13:26:51 1999 From: fingal at cyberus.ca (Brian Dawson) Date: Sat, 10 Jul 1999 00:26:51 -0400 Subject: [asia-apec 1192] CBC: New APEC documents foretell testimony of federal officials Message-ID: <3.0.1.32.19990710002651.01136c78@mail.cyberus.ca> [Note: also on the www.cbcnews.cbc.ca site: INDEPTH: The APEC files] New APEC documents foretell testimony of federal officials WebPosted Fri Jul 9 08:09:14 1999 VANCOUVER - New documents from the APEC inquiry obtained by CBC Radio, indicate federal officials scheduled to testify in the fall will give new explanations for the actions of the federal government. The hearings in Vancouver are examining police conduct towards protesters at the 1997 summit of Asia-Pacific Economic Conference. The new documents are unsworn statements meant to summarize what the commission staff anticipate two senior people involved in the APEC planning will talk about when they testify. One of the witnesses is the prime minister's former director of operations, Jean Carle. The other is Canada's former ambassador to Indonesia, Gary Smith. Both men played key roles in ensuring the Indonesians that their leader, Suharto, wouldn't be embarrassed by protests surrounding APEC meetings. Carle's role in the planning included sorting out details of the main meeting at the University of British Columbia. The new documents indicate Carle is expected to say it was concerns of safety over one protest zone near the law building that led to a dispute between him and the university. UBC had accused Carle of trying to push protesters out of sight. Carle is also expected to say both he and Jean Chretien were well aware of Indonesian officials' concerns that Suharto might suffer embarrassment by seeing demonstrations. In fact, the document says Carle will confirm that the prime minister was getting fed up with the continued reports about Indonesian worries. The document summarizing Smith's anticipated testimony says Smith told commission officials that staff with Indonesia's own human rights agency were worried that if demonstrations went ahead in Canada, Suharto might take a tougher line back home. This is separate from Smith's referals to Indonesians' concerns about embarrassment and humiliation at the hands of protesters. Jessie Read of the East Timor Alert Network in Ottawa says worries from Indonesia's human rights agency shouldn't have bothered Smith since many other Indonesian activists were urging Canadians to protest. "In 1997 the Indonesian human rights commission that Mr. Smith is quoting from, was still very much controlled by Suharto and his military regime," says Read. "So it's not surprising that some representatives of this commission would have discouraged protest." Carle couldn't be reached for comment by CBC Radio News. Smith, now Vice President of York University in Toronto refused to comment on the document. Both men are expected to testify at the inquiry later this year. From gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Sun Jul 11 08:45:10 1999 From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Sun, 11 Jul 1999 11:45:10 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1193] NZ Trade Development Board on APEC Message-ID: Export News (Newpaper published for NZ Trade Development Board [Tradenz]) 12 July 1999 APEC pushes industrial products into WTO Round by Warren Head Industrial products will be added to the forthcoming round of trade negotiations by member states of the World Trade Organisation, if APEC trade ministers are heard. Trade ministers meeting in Auckland agreed upon a set of "practical initiatives that collectively reinvigorate the APEC process", says New Zealand Trade Minister Lockwood Smith. An agreement to push for inclusion of industrial products in the WTO round of global trade liberalisation negotiations to liberalise trade in agriculture and services, is the most important outcome from the APEC trade ministers' meeting held at Auckland's Aotea Centre. Officials are to report in September on other issues which could be included in the WTO negotiations. Pressure for these negotiations to be concluded within three years confirms the increasing urgency with the APEC economies for further trade reform after the economic crisis within the region over the past three years. Every APEC member agrees that the best way to repair the damage of the crisis and to insure against any future crisis is to make solid progress towards APEC's trade liberalisation and facilitation goals and actively promote the development of robust, transparent, markets. Representatives came from the 21 Asia-Pacific economies with 368 delegates in attendance including the deputy secretary-general of ASEAN Dr Setboonsarng Suthad, the chair of the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council Roberto Romulo, and the South Pacific Forum, represented by Willie Jimmy, deputy prime minister of Vanuatu. The United States was represented by US deputy trade representatives Richard Fisher and Sue Esserman, in the absence of trade representative Charlene Barshefsky, who withdrew because of a family emergency. Ministers agreed that the region was recovering from the economic crisis and APEC's commitment to maintenance of open markets and individual reforms in the face of the crisis has played a significant role in moderating its impact and in hastening recovery. They emphasised that open, transparent and well governed markets are the key to a return to sustainable economic growth in the region and prosperity. Actions taken by economies are the principal means of achieving APEC's goal of free and open trade and investment by 2010/2020. Preliminary Individual Action Plans show 14 states have reduced tariffs, 14 have liberalised their investment regimes and 17 notified measures in the areas of competition policy and deregulation. Nonetheless, ministers agreed to further improve the credibility of their IAPs which need to be more comprehensive, transparent and more user-friendly. Improved IAPs are due back before an August deadline. There has been progress on Collective Action Plans in the areas of customs procedures, mutual recognition of standards and conformity assessment procedures, mobility of business persons, government procurement and professional services. These areas can be crucial to trade flows by lowering transaction costs. Ministers noted the growing support for new WTO negotiations on industrial tariffs and agreed the WTO atmosphere is now positive for the negotiation of the tariff elements of the remaining six Early Voluntary Sectoral Liberalisation sectors: automotive (no tariff element), civil aircraft, fertilisers, food, oilseeds and rubber. They will study the impact of non tariff barriers in the forest products industry; study whether fishing subsidies comply with WTO rules; seek ways to develop the auto sector; hold a seminar on ISO safety standards for the toy sector; implement training programmes for jewellery testing, assaying and hallmarking; study environmental goods and services for export opportunities; and start a training programme for designers of toys and novelties. They will urge the WTO to take into account APEC work to liberalise trade in six other sectors. The results from the trade ministers meeting may test the perception held by the public and the private sector that APEC meetings make pace but slowly. Moves to keep the new WTO round to three years rather than the seven years of the Uruguay Round are winning support from the business sector which wants increased certainty and improved clarity on trade rules. Dr Smith earned strong praise from Devon McLean, chair of the NZ Forest Industries Council, for securing APEC support for the inclusion of the industrial sector, including forest products, in the next WTO round. "Since 1996 our industry has supported the government's efforts - led by Dr Lockwood Smith - to negotiate improved access via APEC and, more importantly, secure globally significant and binding tariff reductions for forest products within the WTO." New Zealand's annual wood harvest will double to 35 million m3 by 2015. McLean notes the importance, within that timeframe, of improving the ability of New Zealand forest product manufacturers to compete in expanding markets in APEC economies like China and Indonesia, as well as non-APEC economies like India or the EU. Higher value products such as gluelam construction beams, furniture components and high value packaging material are likely to be the most important driver of further investment in processing in New Zealand. "Capturing more value in New Zealand through further forest products processing will deliver our industry, those regions within which it operates and the economy significant benefit in terms of job and wealth creation," says McLean. Progress was also made on the APEC food system proposal launched last year by the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC). ABAC brought its priorities for trade reform to an APEC trade roundtable of company leaders and trade ministers chaired by Comalco New Zealand chief executive Kerry McDonald. The roundtable, at Auckland's Carlton Hotel, was held as part of an APEC trade ministers' meeting for the first time. It followed earlier discussion by ABAC, chaired by former New Zealand trade minister Philip Burdon, who has expressed his concerns for a faster reform process. Burdon says ABAC had a very successful meeting in Tokyo in May and has "some substantial and credible recommendations" for APEC leaders this year, including a strong message it wants to see the pace of trade and investment liberalisation sped up in the region. "These recommendations will be helpful to New Zealand in that they will put pressure on the official process to move forward with its work programme," he told Trade NZ's APEC Business Symposium. ABAC urged ministers to take work forward in five main areas: continued trade and investment liberalisation, strengthening IAPs, the APEC Food System, capacity-building, Y2K and aviation liberalisation. APEC transport ministers will be urged to implement four priority recommendations for air services liberalisation that have been developed by the transportation working group in the areas of doing business, airfreight, multiple airline designation and airlines co-operation. The trade ministers' meeting also received recommendations for a strong reform agenda by APEC governments from an APEC Business Symposium organised by Trade NZ and chaired by chief executive Fran Wilde. The symposium identified the importance of macroeconomic adjustment, structural reform and transparent regulatory regimes. An awareness of global business trends and "the inevitability of globalisation, driven by the world's consumers, was the overarching theme," says Wilde. Ministers agreed that women in APEC are "an enormous untapped potential for improving economic and social wellbeing" and took recommendations from the Women Leaders' Meeting 21-23 June and Indigenous Women in Business seminary 18-20 June. From gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Sun Jul 11 15:20:06 1999 From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Sun, 11 Jul 1999 18:20:06 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1194] Trade Ministers Statement - Auckland APEC Message-ID: <8No9aF1w165w@corso.ch.planet.gen.nz> Meeting of Ministers Responsible for Trade (Auckland, New Zealand, 29-30 June, 1999) STATEMENT OF THE CHAIR APEC Ministers Responsible for Trade met in Auckland on 29-30 June to progress APEC’s work programme in accordance with instructions given by Leaders in Kuala Lumpur. 2 Ministers met in an environment of shared confidence that the region was in the process of recovering from the economic crisis which has beset it over the past two years, but were aware that continuing challenges remain. They recognised that the commitment of APEC economies to the maintenance of open markets and individual reforms in the face of the crisis had played a significant role in moderating the impact of the crisis and in hastening recovery. Ministers emphasised that open, transparent and well governed markets are key to a return to sustainable economic growth in the region and to the prosperity of its peoples. At the same time Ministers acknowledged the significant economic and social impact of the crisis around the region, and drew attention to the extensive array of work APEC has underway to help address these issues. 3 Against this background, Ministers focussed their discussion around the three themes that New Zealand as Chair has established for APEC 99: expanding opportunities for doing business throughout the region, strengthening markets and broadening support for APEC. Theme 1: Expanding opportunities for doing business throughout the region 4 This area of work recognises that business has the task of generating growth, employment and prosperity in our economies and that keeping markets open - and opening them further - is vital to the development of sustainable business opportunities. The work aims to make business easier throughout the region, particularly for small and medium enterprises, through the elimination of red tape. Individual and Collective Action Plans 5 Actions taken individually by economies are the principal means of achieving APEC’s goal of free and open trade and investment by 2010/2020. Ministers welcomed the indication by economies of substantial improvements in preliminary Individual Action Plans this year. Fourteen have implemented tariff reductions, fourteen have liberalised their investment regimes, and seventeen notified measures in the area of competition policy and/or deregulation. Nonetheless Ministers, reflecting business concerns, agreed to further improve the credibility of their Individual Action Plans. The Plans needed to be more comprehensive, more transparent, and more user-friendly. They agreed to seek the advice of their business communities, and to submit improved Plans by the August deadline. 6 Ministers emphasised the importance they attached to the review of the Individual Action Plan process this year, in order to take stock of the progress made to date and the challenges which remain in achieving the Bogor Goals. They welcomed PECC’s contribution to the review process. Ministers directed officials to report in September with recommendations on ways to improve the process. They welcomed the offers by Thailand and Peru to volunteer for peer review. 7 Ministers were pleased with progress to date on Collective Action Plans, including in the areas of customs procedures, mutual recognition of standards and conformity assessment procedures, mobility of business persons, government procurement, and professional services. Such measures are critical to boosting trade and investment flows through lowering the transaction costs of business. Ministers agreed that APEC needed to work better at communicating the value of this work to business and to receive feedback from business on their priorities. Ministers instructed officials to develop a package of concrete measures in September. 8 Given the evolution of circumstances since 1995, Ministers instructed officials to review the Collective Action Plan component of the Osaka Action Agenda including the need to broaden, deepen or modify this component of the Agenda, and instructed officials to report on this issue in September. APEC Food System 9 Ministers welcomed the progress being made by the Task Force studying the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC) proposal for an APEC Food System. Ministers agreed the proposal offers a useful approach to food issues by focussing on the development of rural infrastructure, dissemination of technological advances in food production and processing, and promotion of trade in food products. Ministers emphasised the importance of addressing these three areas in a balanced way. They looked forward to receiving a final report and recommendations, for their consideration in September, on what APEC needs to do to respond effectively to the proposal. Ministers were also informed of ABAC’s ongoing work on the APEC Food System. APEC/World Trade Organisation 10 APEC is committed to open regionalism and supports the multilateral trading system. Ministers noted the mutually reinforcing role of the goals of both APEC and WTO. Ministers recognised the importance of this area of APEC’s work to the region’s business community, particularly as a response to protectionist pressures in the region. 11 Ministers agreed on the importance of ensuring full implementation of existing WTO agreements. Ministers encouraged acceleration of outstanding accession negotiations in accordance with WTO rules and based on commercially viable market access commitments with a view to achieving a universality of WTO membership. 12 Ministers recalled the particular importance which Leaders in Kuala Lumpur attached to early progress being made on broad-based multilateral negotiations in the WTO, achieving an overall balance of interests of all members. Ministers expressed satisfaction with the preparations in the WTO of the agenda for the Third WTO Ministerial Meeting in Seattle. They noted that a number of proposals have been tabled and agreed that APEC economies should take the lead in ensuring that all proposals are put on the table, desirably by the end of July. They agreed on the need for an intensification of activity in Geneva in the final phase of preparations for the Seattle Ministerial and endorsed calls for work to begin on drafting the Seattle Ministerial declaration during August. They agreed that the Seattle Ministerial Declaration should contain agreement on both the subject matter for negotiations and on the modalities for progressing negotiations. They also agreed that further consideration should be given to the possibility of specific decisions to support the launch at Seattle of such broad-based negotiations. 13 Ministers agreed that the negotiation agenda should be broader than that already specified in the built-in agenda principally on agriculture and services, and that these areas and negotiations on industrial (non-agricultural) tariffs should serve as an integral part of the forthcoming negotiations. Ministers agreed that the negotiations should be concluded within three years. 14 Ministers further agreed on the need to ensure that the concerns of developing economies, including the least developed economies, are addressed in any new WTO negotiations. They noted that this was something to which APEC, with its broad membership and unique approach to trade and investment liberalisation, is well placed to contribute. Ministers instructed officials to consider the concerns of developing economies and least developed economies together with other possible issues for inclusion on the agenda for the Seattle WTO Ministerial Meeting including transparency in government procurement, electronic commerce, and trade facilitation and to report to Ministers at their September meeting. 15 Pursuant to their agreement in Kuala Lumpur on the front nine EVSL sectors, Ministers of participating economies emphasised the importance of the Accelerated Tariff Liberalisation (ATL) initiative in providing impetus to the wider negotiation on industrial (non-agricultural) tariffs which they agreed should be launched at Seattle. They welcomed progress in the initiative since November, including the support it had received from a number of non-APEC WTO members and instructed officials to continue to promote the initiative, endeavouring to conclude agreement in the WTO in 1999. They also agreed that participating economies should engage again with WTO members in July on their reaction to the initiative and on how it will tie into the launch, conduct, and outcome of any new WTO negotiations. 16 Ministers of participating economies noted the growing support for new WTO negotiations on industrial tariffs, and agreed that the atmosphere in the WTO was now positive for the negotiation in the WTO of the tariff elements of the remaining six EVSL sectors (Early Voluntary Sectoral Liberalisation) sectors - automotive (no tariff element), civil aircraft, fertilisers, food, oilseeds, and rubber. In this regard, they recalled the instructions received from Leaders in Vancouver to pursue an ongoing programme of voluntary liberalisation, and their intention that APEC continue to act as a catalyst for promoting trade and investment liberalisation globally, and in Kuala Lumpur to further advance work on the remaining six EVSL sectors. 17 Ministers of participating economies therefore resolved that the tariff elements of the remaining six EVSL sectors should be negotiated in the WTO during the course of the negotiations on agriculture already mandated in the WTO under the BIA, and the negotiations on industrial (non-agricultural) tariffs which they agree should be launched at the Third WTO Ministerial meeting. They took note of the efforts made by participating APEC economies to develop a framework for the reduction or elimination of tariffs in these sectors within an expedited timeframe, in accordance with the principle of flexibility, and called upon the WTO to take these efforts into account in the upcoming WTO negotiations. 18 APEC’s EVSL initiative has always been about more than tariff liberalisation. Ministers welcomed progress made on implementing the non-tariff measure, facilitation and Ecotech elements agreed at Kuala Lumpur and the further initiatives developed since then, a list of which is attached. Ministers emphasised the need to continue implementation of all three elements and requested that officials report in September on further deliverables in this area. Theme 2: Strengthening the Functioning of Markets 19 The pace of globalisation and the scope and depth of the economic crisis have underscored the need for broader policy responses to support sustainable long term economic growth and prosperity in the region. Trade liberalisation on its own is not enough. Efficient, innovative and competitive businesses require efficient, flexible and competitive markets. Ministers agreed on the need to improve the openness and efficiency of domestic markets in the region. This requires strengthened competition frameworks to support wider structural and regulatory reform, improved economic governance (public and corporate) arrangements, and accelerated efforts to reduce business costs in all markets. 20 Ministers agreed to intensify work in these areas and welcomed the strengthening markets approach this year to underpin recovery in the real economy. They noted that the sound operation of markets would improve the welfare of citizens by giving them better choice and better quality at lower costs. Strengthening markets provides a means of linking and reinforcing APEC’s efforts on trade and investment, regulatory reform, and capacity building. Ministers highlighted the importance that business, SME Ministers and Women Leaders attached to reducing compliance costs on small business, improving the capacity of financial markets to meet the needs of small business, and building management capability. Ministers agreed to intensify work under the Collective Action Plans and Ecotech programmes on these issues. 21 Ministers recognised the importance of developing a framework for advancing work on the strengthening markets approach. They supported the work underway to develop non-binding principles on competition and regulatory reform and instructed officials to complete recommendations by September. They appreciated PECC’s contribution. Ministers welcomed initiatives undertaken by the Finance Ministers on international financial issues and on strengthening financial markets. They welcomed Japan’s initiative to strengthen market infrastructure. Ministers also recognised the critical importance of building relevant institutional capacity and human skills, and agreed to develop further specific proposals in this area by September. Economic and Technical Cooperation 22 Ministers welcomed work underway to improve the effectiveness of APEC’s Economic and Technical Cooperation (Ecotech) agenda through strengthening coordination and intensifying work on priority areas. They expected this work would be reflected in the 1999 report on Ecotech activities and instructed officials to report in September on concrete outcomes achieved including the following specific initiatives: developing a matrix to assist in the evaluation of Ecotech project proposals; and an electronic "clearing house" to enhance Ecotech information flows. They also requested officials to evaluate the effectiveness of projects implemented and to report in September. Electronic Commerce 23 The Electronic Commerce Steering Group updated Ministers on progress in implementing the APEC Blueprint for Action on Electronic Commerce adopted by Ministers in November 1998. Key areas for action are: improving the legal environment; paperless trading - aimed at streamlining transport, freight, customs and other transactions throughout the region; developing a readiness template for benchmarking policies against best practice in areas that drive electronic commerce development; development of comparable measures and indicators of e-commerce among APEC economies. They instructed officials to report further in September on progress achieved. Y2K 24 Ministers emphasised that it was a matter of utmost urgency to ensure regional economies were as prepared as possible to manage the Y2K problem. When Leaders met in September, little more than 100 days before the new millennium, they would want to be confident that everything possible was being done. Ministers focussed in particular on the need for effective contingency planning and cross-border cooperation among economies to reduce risks from potential disruptions. They welcomed the activities underway in APEC, and directed officials to prepare a full and substantive report in September on actions underway. 25 Ministers therefore instructed officials to accelerate work on cross-sector and cross-economy dependencies including testing, information dissemination and improving systems to bolster regional contingency plans and continuity of operations. Specifically, Ministers urged economies to respond urgently to the questionnaire circulated by Canada, Japan and Singapore and the request for contact information from each economy on the key sectors, in order to develop a Y2K readiness and network of contact points. They agreed that the website being developed by Canada and the US was a useful means of exchanging information and develop contingency planning, and welcomed the US proposal for a Y2K risk assessment toolkit for cross-border issues, which would be posted on the this website. Theme 3: Broadening Support 26 Ministers agreed that the understanding and engagement of communities was increasingly critical to APEC’s credibility and its capacity to deliver on its goals. Drawing on the outcome of the seminar ‘Bridging the Gap: Explaining Trade and Investment Liberalisation’ held in Auckland on 28 June, Ministers noted that perceptions about liberalisation are often distorted because the substantial benefits of liberalisation are widely dispersed whereas the adjustment costs are localised and more visible. Ministers endorsed the emphasis of the seminar on the importance of developing innovative tools for communicating effectively with communities; the need to eliminate jargon; to focus on things that are directly relevant to people’s experience; and to improve transparency. They agreed that the Seattle WTO Ministerial Meeting would be a key opportunity for conveying a strong message on trade and investment liberalisation. 27 Ministers reiterated the critical importance of direct dialogue with business. ABAC urged Ministers to take work forward in five main areas: continued trade and investment liberalisation, strengthening Individual Action Plans, the APEC Food System, capacity-building, Y2K and aviation liberalisation. Ministers took note of all the comments. In particular they noted the strong links between tourism and air services liberalisation, and agreed that the Chair should write to APEC Transport Ministers urging them to implement the four priority recommendations for air services liberalisation that have been developed by the Transportation Working Group in the areas of doing business matters, air freight, multiple airline designation, and airlines cooperation arrangements. Ministers instructed officials to report to Ministers on APEC’s response to ABAC’s recommendations in September. 28 A Trade Roundtable with business representatives from around the region was held for the first time as part of the Ministerial meeting. Ministers welcomed the conclusions of the Roundtable and directed officials to examine the conclusions to make sure that they inform our work. The conclusions of the Trade Roundtable are attached. Ministers were also briefed on the outcomes of the Business Symposium held in Auckland 24-26 June. The symposium identified the critical importance of macro-economic adjustment, structural reform and transparent regulatory regimes to support open, market-based economies. 29 Ministers agreed that women in APEC are an enormous untapped potential for improving economic and social well-being and recognised the unique contribution of indigenous businesswomen in APEC. They welcomed the recommendations from the Women Leaders’ Network meeting held in Wellington 21-23 June, and the Indigenous Women in Business Seminar held on 18-20 June. Recognising the differential impact of trade on men and women, Ministers agreed that particular attention needs to be paid to women’s access to finance, information, technology and their full participation in APEC. Ministers reinforced the importance of the Framework for the Integration of Women in APEC as requested by Leaders. They looked forward to finalising the Framework by September for forwarding to Leaders. 30 Ministers also welcomed reports from representatives of the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC), the South Pacific Forum and the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). Annex A EVSL: Non-Tariff Measures, Facilitation and Ecotech Elements (as noted in para 18) a study on the full range non tariff measures and their impact in the forest products area; a study on the consistency of global fisheries subsidy practices with WTO rules; an Automotive Dialogue involving the auto industry and governments across APEC to map out strategies for increasing integration and development of the auto sector; a seminar on implementation of ISO safety standards for the toy sector; implementation of training programmes for Jewellery Testing, Assaying and Hallmarking; a survey of environmental goods and services markets in APEC; a programme of training and development of designers and sample makers in the toy and novelties industry; an APEC Gems and Jewellery Conference. Further deliverables are being prepared for the APEC Ministerial meeting in September. Annex B (refer paragraph 28) APEC TRADE ROUNDTABLE DIALOGUE WITH APEC MINISTERS RESPONSIBLE FOR TRADE AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND 30 JUNE 1999 CONCLUSIONS Introduction We are all faced with the challenges of responding to globalisation and the interdependency of markets - the role of governments is to create a competitive policy environment. the role of business is to operate efficiently and create value. value creation in APEC economies raises living standards and well being of APEC communities. It is the basis for sustainable economic development, growth in jobs and consumer well being. the quality of policy has a decisive influence on the ability of business to operate effectively and efficiently, and create value. business values and supports APEC’s objectives and processes but is disappointed by the slowness of progress. It urges Ministers to act with greater urgency and effectiveness and is ready and willing to assist. It recognises that there will be difficult trade-offs for all economies. participants consider that this forum was valuable. It contributes "grass roots" views into the APEC trade processes. It should be repeated. STRENGTHENING THE MULTILATERAL TRADING SYSTEM some tariffs in APEC are too high and it’s hard to see APEC’s successes (ETM exporter). Business needs more effective action to reduce tariffs, and soon. The WTO processes are too slow and the delay is costing APEC economies and consumers. push ahead with EVSL and work towards multilateral support for the ATL initiative. speed up work to eliminate market distorting measures such as export and capacity subsidies especially in the agriculture sector. Work to reduce tariff peaks in the agriculture sector, eliminate non-tariff barriers to trade such as the use of phytosanitary restrictions (eg. bananas, pineapples and mangoes from the Philippines into Australia and the United States), and remove quantitative restrictions. improve the WTO’s dispute settlement mechanism - make it more robust and effective. increase APEC’s focus on knowledge based industries by promoting initiatives that develop people and eliminate distorting taxation incentives. Leaders and Ministers must implement what has already been agreed in the area of e-commerce in APEC and broader forums (such as the WTO in the area of telecommunications). Avoid imposing additional restrictions on e-commerce - regulations, duties, taxes and non-tariff barriers. Emerging technologies should be encouraged. review anti-dumping policies. support the use of regional agreements to facilitate WTO processes. Trade Facilitation issues better communicate APEC’s work on trade facilitation in order to improve understanding and increase support from business and others for this work, which is important. improve the ease of business travel by simplifying arrangements and reducing the amount of paperwork associated with moving people on short term assignments. Urge all APEC economies to join the APEC Business Travel Card Scheme. reduce the compliance costs associated with trade, which are especially severe for SMEs, through improved cooperation in such areas as customs and standards. Existing processes are unduly complex and inconsistent and APEC’s progress is too slow. Also cross border costs are often arbitrary, too high, changeable and not appealable. modernise and harmonise customs systems across the region including by establishing electronic data interchange systems and shared data banks. Harmonise product and commodity classifications. Simplify and harmonise customs procedures, guidelines and documentation requirements. Benchmark progress against best practice standards. Again, progress is too slow. improve coordination of APEC work on electronic commerce and recognise the role of the private sector in leading the work agenda in this area. Needs more effective ministerial involvement/leadership. there are no borders in e-commerce but there are in legal systems. APEC should intensify work on cross-border fraud and virus contamination issues associated with electronic commerce. This is an area of increasing significance and cross-border enforcement is essential. work towards harmonising qualifications and recognising skills acquired in the region. the complexity and inconsistency of tax systems is a major problem. STRENGTHENING THE FUNCTIONING OF MARKETS encourage a more competitive and less intrusive market environment by implementing "competition policy" in the broader sense. Open markets are the strongest. adopt competition and regulatory principles in APEC to assist with the creation of such an environment. Ensure these principles are discussed with business. support the creation of a more competitive market environment by building capacity and strengthening institutions in developing economies. use a partnership between the government and the private sector to improve transparency. Better transparency has many benefits. help improve transparency by reforming government procurement systems. Work to harmonise regulatory regimes. liberalise international aviation rights and air cargo/freight services - 40 per cent of world trade (by value) is by air. open markets to imports as a primary source of competition. provide transparent and consistent treatment to foreign investors. limit the activities of export monopolies and cartels in international markets. Competitive pricing of goods and services is essential. Governments should eliminate the fixing of prices and market shares. OTHER ISSUES improve and strengthen intellectual property rights in the region especially in the area of biotechnology (genetic patterns). APEC needs an integrated, consistent process. Patents on naturally invented products should only be granted with caution. The desirability of patents for software also needs to be examined. Copyright is preferable. better communicate APEC’s achievements and actively promote the benefits of trade and investment liberalisation. Innovative approaches are required. 24 hours in the life of APEC? Rethink the role and involvement of the media in APEC meetings. improve and build on the way APEC operates. Assist APEC members to liberalise trade and investment through economic and technical cooperation. Focus more on implementation. Identify ways for business people across the region to network and drive APEC’s agenda. Work in ways that encourage people to bring creative ideas to the table. Business should be involved in peer reviews of APEC Individual Action Plans. develop innovative models to address environment, labour and human rights but don’t link them to trade issues and penalise developing economies. strengthen monetary/financial systems in the region to assist stability in currencies. public sector charges are often excessive and unpredictable. For further information, contact the Director (Public Affairs), APEC Secretariat, Singapore. Telephone: (65) 276 1880; Fax: (65) 276 1775; Email: ccj@mail.apecsec.org.sg Please also check the website for APEC documents and other information: http://www.apecsec.org.sg Ministerial Meetings From tclarke at web.net Wed Jul 14 11:17:22 1999 From: tclarke at web.net (Tony Clarke) Date: Tue, 13 Jul 1999 22:17:22 -0400 Subject: [asia-apec 1195] Re: NZ/APEC: Activist not backing down Message-ID: <007001becda3$3de60280$d70d059a@tonyclar> Hi Aziz, Well done my friend! The struggle continues! I received your message from a few days ago about looking at ways to internationalize your fight-back campaign against SIS. I will be away on vacation until the first week of August. Let's try to connect by email then. O.K? Cheers, Tony -----Original Message----- From: Gatt Watchdog To: asia-apec@jca.ax.apc.org Cc: jaggi@tao.ca ; rf.dsouza@auckland.ac.nz ; saskia@gn.apc.org ; sheac@ucla.edu Date: Friday, July 09, 1999 3:29 AM Subject: [asia-apec 1190] NZ/APEC: Activist not backing down > >Christchurch Star, Friday July 9 1999 > >Activist not backing down >By Marianne Betts > >A ground-breaking case against the Security Intelligence Service >will continue, despite a ruling from the Court of Appeal to keep >documents relating to the bungled break-in of a Christchurch >activist's home secret. > >Aziz Choudry, who is suing the SIS for $300,000 after a break-in >at his Sockburn home three years ago, during the Apec Trade >Ministers meeting, said he would continue with his civil case >regardless of the ruling. > >"I won't back down on this and will have to see where we will go >from here," Mr Choudry said. > >He said he had asked the court to review 60 secret documents >relating to the botched break-in which the SIS had refused to >disclose. > >Four of the five judges ruled the SIS did not have to disclose >these documents and that a certificate by Prime Minister Jenny >Shipley saying their release would prejudice national security was >sufficient to prevent the High Court judge in the case from >reviewing the documents. > >Mr Choudry said he was disappointed by the judgement, which would >fuel anxieties about the service. > >The Apec Monitoring Group, of which Mr Choudry is part, feared the >judgement gave the SIS and the Prime Minister protection from any >real scrutiny of their activities and allowed them to keep secret >information they deemed to be prejudicial to their activities. > >Spokesperson for the group Leigh Cookson said the judgement was >disturbing, coming in the year New Zealand is to host the Apec >forum. > >"Any assurance given that the opponents of Apec in 1999 will have >their right to dissent respected can only be treated with >suspicion and contempt," Ms Cookson said. > >The majority decision from four of the five judges said the >judicial inspection of the documents would be unlikely to advance >matters responsibly. Justice Thomas disagreed, saying national >security would suffer. > > > From gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Wed Jul 14 15:53:00 1999 From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Wed, 14 Jul 1999 18:53:00 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1196] NZ Trade Union Federation Media Release Message-ID: <270DBF1w165w@corso.ch.planet.gen.nz> NZ Trade Union Federation PO Box 11-891 WELLINGTON NEW ZEALAND Fax 64 4 3848007 Email: Michael.Gilchrist@tradeshall.org.nz MEDIA STATEMENT For Immediate Use 14 July 1999 ILO appoints committee on Prison Labour in NZ The International Labour Organisation will examine whether the Government's Inmate Employment Programme is in breach of ILO Convention 29 on Forced or Compulsory Labour, Trade Union Federation Secretary, Michael Gilchrist said today. The ILO Governing body has accepted the TUF's representation alleging breaches of the forced labour convention by the NZ Government and appointed a committee from among its members to examine the case. "This procedure is not common," Mr Gilchrist said. "We have had to apply directly to the Governing body for two reasons. First, the Inmate Employment Scheme is a flagrant breach of Convention 29. It exploits a captive workforce to provide cheap labour for private enterprise. "The second reason we have this representation is that the Council of Trade Unions (CTU), whose job it is to represent New Zealand workers at the ILO, has condoned the inmate employment scheme. CTU President, Ken Douglas, has accepted a position on the Inmate Employment Steering Committee which is helping to implement the programme. So the normal checking mechanism is not working." Mr Gilchrist said that the TUF had little doubt that the representation would succeed. "I would be extremely surprised if this committee departs from the principles the ILO has laid down time and again. If you are going to hire prisoners to private companies it must be with the freely given consent of the prisoners, with no punishment or disadvantage in refusal and these workers must receive normal wages and work under comparable conditions. There can be no exceptions. "Indeed, in its own briefing papers, the Government anticipates adverse comment from the ILO. It is, however, preparing to brazen out the situation. This is despite the fact that as the ILO observed in relation to certain prisons in Australia just last year, the prohibition on hiring prisoners to private individuals, companies or associations must be "absolute"." "The New Zealand Government has called for "greater flexibility" in the implementation of ILO Conventions as part of a programme to "reform" the ILO. No doubt their willingness to flout conventions reflects their reforming zeal," Mr Gilchrist noted. The prison population in New Zealand grew by 50% between 1986 and 1996 to some 5,600 persons. It is now at a level of 1 prisoner per 750 free citizens, the highest level since the 1880's and the second highest rate in the developed world behind the USA. 649 jobs were created for prisoners in 18 months in 1997 and 1998, mainly through the involvement of private enterprise. In advertising material for employers the Government states that: the Inmate Employment Programme is "best suited to labour intensive industries that need relatively little training." Prisoners forced to work receive between $12 and $25 for a 30 hour week. For further information please contact: Michael Gilchrist 04 384 8963 From rreid at actrix.gen.nz Wed Jul 14 17:47:43 1999 From: rreid at actrix.gen.nz (Robert Reid) Date: Wed, 14 Jul 1999 20:47:43 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1197] Re: NZ/APEC: Activist not backing down Message-ID: <199907140857.UAA06923@mail.actrix.gen.nz> is this Maude's friend calling you my friend :) ---------- > From: Tony Clarke > To: asia-apec@jca.apc.org > Subject: [asia-apec 1195] Re: NZ/APEC: Activist not backing down > Date: Wednesday, 14 July 1999 14:17 > > > Hi Aziz, > > Well done my friend! The struggle continues! > > I received your message from a few days ago about looking at ways to > internationalize your fight-back campaign against SIS. I will be away on > vacation until the first week of August. Let's try to connect by email then. > O.K? > > Cheers, > Tony > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Gatt Watchdog > To: asia-apec@jca.ax.apc.org > Cc: jaggi@tao.ca ; rf.dsouza@auckland.ac.nz > ; saskia@gn.apc.org ; > sheac@ucla.edu > Date: Friday, July 09, 1999 3:29 AM > Subject: [asia-apec 1190] NZ/APEC: Activist not backing down > > > > > >Christchurch Star, Friday July 9 1999 > > > >Activist not backing down > >By Marianne Betts > > > >A ground-breaking case against the Security Intelligence Service > >will continue, despite a ruling from the Court of Appeal to keep > >documents relating to the bungled break-in of a Christchurch > >activist's home secret. > > > >Aziz Choudry, who is suing the SIS for $300,000 after a break-in > >at his Sockburn home three years ago, during the Apec Trade > >Ministers meeting, said he would continue with his civil case > >regardless of the ruling. > > > >"I won't back down on this and will have to see where we will go > >from here," Mr Choudry said. > > > >He said he had asked the court to review 60 secret documents > >relating to the botched break-in which the SIS had refused to > >disclose. > > > >Four of the five judges ruled the SIS did not have to disclose > >these documents and that a certificate by Prime Minister Jenny > >Shipley saying their release would prejudice national security was > >sufficient to prevent the High Court judge in the case from > >reviewing the documents. > > > >Mr Choudry said he was disappointed by the judgement, which would > >fuel anxieties about the service. > > > >The Apec Monitoring Group, of which Mr Choudry is part, feared the > >judgement gave the SIS and the Prime Minister protection from any > >real scrutiny of their activities and allowed them to keep secret > >information they deemed to be prejudicial to their activities. > > > >Spokesperson for the group Leigh Cookson said the judgement was > >disturbing, coming in the year New Zealand is to host the Apec > >forum. > > > >"Any assurance given that the opponents of Apec in 1999 will have > >their right to dissent respected can only be treated with > >suspicion and contempt," Ms Cookson said. > > > >The majority decision from four of the five judges said the > >judicial inspection of the documents would be unlikely to advance > >matters responsibly. Justice Thomas disagreed, saying national > >security would suffer. > > > > > > From gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Thu Jul 15 13:35:56 1999 From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Thu, 15 Jul 1999 16:35:56 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1198] Alternatives to the APEC Agenda Conference Message-ID: AOTEAROA/NEW ZEALAND APEC MONITORING GROUP Auckland Office Ground Floor, Methodist Mission Building 370 Queen Street Box 106 233 Auckland Phone (64) 9 302 5390 extn 833 or (64) 9 8463227 Fax (64) 9 846 3297 Mobile 021 217 3039 Email: notoapec@clear.net.nz Christchurch Office Box 1905 Christchurch Phone (64) 3 3662803 Fax (64) 3 3668035 Email: notoapaec@clear.net.nz Website: www.apec.gen.nz Alternatives to the APEC Agenda Conference Programme and Registration Details _____________________________________________________________________________ Organised by the Aotearoa/New Zealand APEC Monitoring Group Sponsored by GATT Watchdog, CAFCA, and the New Zealand Trade Union Federation 10-12 September 1999 Auckland Aotearoa/New Zealand The Alternatives to the APEC Agenda Conference will build on a year-long education and action programme opposed to APEC and the global freemarket economic agenda which it is part of. This has included forums, public meetings and other activities in Wellington, Christchurch, Auckland, Rotorua and other centres. Alternatives to the APEC Agenda will have a strong domestic focus on the impact of the free trade and investment, free market model on Aotearoa/New Zealand. It will draw the links between this form of "development", colonisation, and the extreme market reforms which successive governments have implemented. Speakers from around the Asia-Pacific region will discuss the implications of this agenda on their communities, and their peoples' responses. The conference aims to develop concrete strategies to expose and oppose corporate-driven processes like APEC and work on genuine alternatives to a fundamentally flawed globalisation agenda. Alternatives to the APEC Agenda is completely independent of official APEC activities and is not funded or sponsored in any way by any government or political party. *********************************************************************** The APEC Monitoring Group Since the 1994 APEC Summit in Indonesia, the Aotearoa/New Zealand APEC Monitoring Group has been involved with ongoing research, education, media and campaign work on the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, and the implications of its agenda for Aotearoa/New Zealand and other APEC member countries. Members of the Monitoring Group have attended alternative meetings on APEC in Jakarta (1994), Osaka/Kyoto (1995), Manila (1996), Vancouver (1997) and Kuala Lumpur (1998) as well as monitoring the official APEC meetings themselves and their impact on the cities that have hosted the events. The APEC Monitoring Group is a member of the GATT Watchdog coalition and works closely with Corso and the Trade Union Federation. *********************************************************************** PROGRAMME Public Meeting 7.30 pm Friday 10 September 1999 Methodist Mission, 370 Queen St, Auckland Speakers: Dr Jane Kelsey, Professor of Law, Auckland University, Author of "The New Zealand Experiment" Antonio Tujan, Director, IBON Databank, Philippines Moses Havini, Representative, Bougainville Interim Government Annette Sykes, Ngati Pikiao, Treaty of Waitangi activist Conference Where: University of Auckland Conference Centre 26 Symonds St, Auckland When: Saturday 11 and Sunday 12 September 1999 _______________________________________ Saturday 11 September 9am Welcome Session One: Implications of the APEC Agenda 9.30 Opening Speaker: Moana Jackson - Ngati Kahungunu; Director, Nga Kaiwhakamarama I Nga Ture (Maori Legal Service) 10 International Panel Sunera Thobani, Ruth Wynn Woodward Professor of Womens Studies, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada and speakers from Mexico, Japan and Korea 11.15 Local Panel Robert Reid, Trade Union Federation Bill Rosenberg, CAFCA (Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa) researcher Peter Wills, biologist, GE activist Leonie Pihama, Ngati Mahanga/Te Atiawa, Maori educationalist 12.15pm Report back from the APEC Monitoring Group on the forums throughout 1999 1pm Lunch Session Two: Alternatives to the APEC Agenda 1.45pm Keynote speaker: Antonio Tujan, Director, IBON Databank, Philippines 2.15 Panel Discussion Prue Hyman, Associate Professor of Economics, Victoria University, Wellington Jane Kelsey, Professor of Law, Auckland University, Author of "The New Zealand Experiment" Rex Varona, Executive Director, Asian Migrant Centre, Hong Kong Annette Sykes, Ngati Pikiao, Treaty activist 3.45 Thematic Workshops 5.30 Report back 7pm Film: The Sixth Sun: Mayan Uprising in Chiapas (1996) by Saul Landau (Drinks and Nibbles will be available) Sunday 12th September Session Three: Strategies for the Future 9.30am Keynote Speaker: Moses Havini, Bougainville Interim Government 10 Panel discussion Mereana Pitman, Ngati Kahungunu, Treaty educator Aziz Choudry, GATT Watchdog Radha D'Souza, Asia Pacific Workers Solidarity Links Crispin Beltran, unionist, chairman of KMU, Philippines 11.30 Thematic Workshops 1pm Lunch 1.45 Report Back 3.30 End 4.30pm Rally (venue and details to be arranged) ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ REGISTRATION FORM: (Please note: Due to venue restraints we have limited the number of overseas registrations to 40 places and local participants to 140. Priority will be given to ensure a broad representation of sectors and community interests.) Name...................................................................... Organisation.............................................................. Brief description of organisation..................... .......................................................................... ......................................................................... Address.................................................................. ......................................................................... Phone................................................................... Email.................................................................. Please register me for the ( ) Alternatives to the APEC Agenda Conference 11/12 September 1999 I enclose a registration fee of ( ) $50.00 waged ( ) $25.00 low waged ( ) $15.00 unwaged ( ) $ .......Donation ( ) High waged people or organisations suggested fee $75.00 ( ) I plan to attend the film showing and social ( ) Accommodation. We ask that participants try and find their own accommodation. If you need help in this please tick here. Please make cheques payable to: Aotearoa/New Zealand Monitoring Group Please send your registration form to APEC Monitoring Group, Box 106 233, Auckland, by 20 August 1999 Enquiries to: notoapec@clear.net.nz From mgtreen at kingdon.ak.planet.gen.nz Thu Jul 15 23:03:30 1999 From: mgtreen at kingdon.ak.planet.gen.nz (Mike Treen) Date: Thu, 15 Jul 1999 23:03:30 Subject: [asia-apec 1199] Re: Alternatives to the APEC Agenda Conference Message-ID: <513@kingdon.ak.planet.gen.nz> A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text Size: 60 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://list.jca.apc.org/manage/private/asia-apec/attachments/19990715/b4161b41/attachment.txt From amittal at foodfirst.org Fri Jul 16 01:42:09 1999 From: amittal at foodfirst.org (Anuradha Mittal) Date: Thu, 15 Jul 1999 09:42:09 -0700 Subject: [asia-apec 1200] IFG Teach-In Seattle Message-ID: From: The International Forum on Globalization The International Forum on Globalization (IFG) is organizing a Teach-In on the World Trade Organization (WTO), to be held in Seattle, Washington, on Saturday November 27, 1999. The event will take place at the 2,500-seat Benaroya Seattle Symphony Hall a few days before the WTO Ministerial meeting. Most of the Teach-In events will be free to the public. The Seattle Teach-In will focus on the problems of economic globalization and, specifically, on the activities of the WTO and other international agreements and institutions. Panels of speakers will address the current failed economic model, and focus on areas such as agriculture, the environment, human rights, labor rights, consumer rights, food safety, public health, and many more issues that are affected by the WTO. We will keep you posted on more specific Teach-In information as it develops. The following is a partial list of featured speakers: Maude Barlow Council of Canadians - Canada Walden Bello Focus on the Global South - Thailand John Cavanagh Institute for Policy Studies - U.S. Tony Clarke Polaris Institute - Canada Edward Goldsmith The Ecologist - U.K. Randall Hayes Rainforest Action Network - U.S. Colin Hines Protect the Local, Globally - U.K. Martin Khor Third World Network - Malaysia Andrew Kimbrell International Center for Technological Assessment - U.S. David Korten People-Centered Development Forum - U.S. Tim Lang Center for Food Policy - U.K. Sara Larrain RENACE (Chilean Ecological Action Network) - Chile Jerry Mander Public Media Center - U.S. Anuradha Mittal Institute for Food and Development Policy - U.S. Helena Norberg-Hodge International Society for Ecology and Culture - U.K. Mark Ritchie Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy - U.S. Vandana Shiva Third World Network - India Steven Shrybman West Coast Environmental Law - Canada Victoria Tauli-Corpuz Indigenous Peoples' Network for Policy and Education - Philippines Lori Wallach Public Citizen - Global Trade Watch - U.S. For More Information, please contact: International Forum on Globalization 1555 Pacific Avenue San Francisco, CA 94109 Tel: (415) 771-3394 Fax:(415) 771-1121 Email: ladan@ifg.org ============================================= Anuradha Mittal Policy Director Institute for Food and Development Policy - Food First 398 60th Street, Oakland, CA 94618 USA Phone: (510) 654-4400 Fax: (510) 654-4551 http://www.foodfirst.org From victor at ncccusa.org Fri Jul 16 21:54:22 1999 From: victor at ncccusa.org (Victor Hsu) Date: Fri, 16 Jul 1999 08:54:22 -0400 Subject: [asia-apec 1201] Re: IFG Teach-In Seattle References: Message-ID: <006301becf8a$6013cf20$8813d6ce@ncccusa.org> Anuradha, Thank you for this advice. Sounds really dynamite. Unfortunately I won't be able to participate. Best wishes as you continue to plan this significant event. It is terribly important for the small people! All power to you. Victor. ************************************************************* Victor Hsu, Director East Asia and the Pacific Office Church World Service and Witness / NCCCUSA E-mail: victor@ncccusa.org v3942475@hk.super.net Tel: 1-212-870-2371 Fax: 1-212-870-2064 ************************************************************** From gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Mon Jul 19 13:09:28 1999 From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Mon, 19 Jul 1999 16:09:28 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1202] NZ: Sex trade gears up for Apec Message-ID: Sunday News, Auckland, New Zealand July 18 1999 (Letters to editor: editor@sunday-news.co.nz) Sex trade gears up for Apec By Simon Jones MASSAGE parlours hope to score some of the $50 million expected to be generated by Apec. Several Auckland parlours are hiring extra girls to cope with an expected surge in demand from thousands of delegates and their aides. With visiting state leaders including American president Bill Clinton, some cheeky escort agencies are even looking to hire Monica Lewinsky lookalikes. "We've been busy planning for Apec for quite some time", said Alan Taylor, manager of Auckland's Number 28 massage parlour. "It's fair to say we see it as a great opportunity for us. In particular we are looking at the Asian market and are looking to hire oriental girls to look after their needs." Many parlours are looking to double their staff during September's three-day Asia-Pacific economic conference in Auckland. Apec is expected to attract 7000 delegates, security staff and journalists from 18 of the world's biggest countries. Femme Fatale parlour said it would take on Monica Lewinsky lookalikes. "At the moment we haven't got any but if there are any out there, we would consider it," said manageress Monique. "If Bill wants to come along, we'd make him feel at home. Just give us a ring first to make an appointment.. "I think every massage parlour in Auckland expects a rise in demand." It won't be just female escorts who will cash in on Apec. Gregg, a spokesman for Auckland male escort agency Adonis, said his company would accommodate female delegates looking for a good time. "We really don't know how much trade we will get but we want to recruit men in their early 20s," Gregg said. Planning against red-faced diplomats APEC security bosses are working out ways to keep visiting delegates away from Auckland's red light areas. Inspector John Mitchell, head of security for the Asian contingent, said police had met to discuss ways of stopping delegates "embarrassing themselves". "We would advise them against visiting massage parlours," he said. "But as long as it isn't illegal they can do what they want." Four delegates from each country represented at Apec will have diplomatic immunity. Mitchell said police had examined problems British officers had with Arab diplomats who were caught shoplifting there. But one detective said he wouldn't stop them visiting any of Auckland's 60 massage parlours. "We're not here to babysit them," he told Sunday News. Minister Joop flew the coop POLICE will not want a repeat of the 1995 Commonwealth summit incident, where Indonesian tourism minister Joop Ave was accused of making a sexual advance on a young man. To protect our relations with the Asian country, the full police report on the incident, at the Commonwealth heads of government meeting in Auckland, has never been released. Ave left New Zealand 24 hours after a young man complained of being sexually harassed when delivering room service to the Indonesian politician's hotel suite. Ave did not have diplomatic immunity and then assistant police commissioner Brian Duncan said the incident was serious enough to push for extradition. But New Zealand did not have such a treaty with Indonesia. From sap at web.net Tue Jul 20 05:56:46 1999 From: sap at web.net (Faruq Faisel) Date: Mon, 19 Jul 1999 16:56:46 -0400 Subject: [asia-apec 1203] Job Opportunity: Executive Director for International NGO Message-ID: <00b901bed229$708c7d60$060000c0@web.net> Please Circulate Job Opportunity: Executive Director for International NGO South Asia Partnership International seeks an Executive Director to head its Secretariat in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The Director will manage relations among its national members in the region and Canada. He/she will provide services to members, coordinate regional programs, anchor fund generation for the system, provide advocacy on development issues in South Asia and maintain SAP International as an active regional - based NGO.He/Sheshall report to the SAP - International Board of Director. The Director should have experience in development work internationally (10 or more years); NGO senior management in South Asia as a Region; organizational development/capacity building; and working with international donor community. He /She will have good communication skills and should possess a post-graduate degree. The Salary is negotiable but will not be less than US$ 2,000 per month, inclusive of an overseas allowance where applicable. Interested candidates should send two copies of their CVs and names of three references, to "The selection committee, SAP- International Executive Director", C/O SAP SRI, No10, Rosmead Place, Colombo 7, Sri Lanka, Deadline: August 1, 1999. For more details contact: Richard Harmston Executive Director South Asia Partnership Canada 1 Nicholas Street, Suite 200 Ottawa, Ontario K1N 7B7 Canada Phone: 613-241 1333 Fax: 613-241 1129 E-mail: sap@web.net URL: www.sapcanada.org From gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Tue Jul 20 15:24:55 1999 From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Tue, 20 Jul 1999 18:24:55 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1204] Add email address Message-ID: <9VcPBF1w165w@corso.ch.planet.gen.nz> Please add notoapec@clear.net.nz to asia-apec listserve thank you From gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Wed Jul 21 12:58:47 1999 From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Wed, 21 Jul 1999 15:58:47 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1205] NZ Media: Odd bedfellows among anti-Apec protesters Message-ID: Evening Post, Wellington, New Zealand July 20 1999 Odd bedfellows among anti-Apec protesters In part two of a three-part series on the September Apec summit, political reporter Guyon Espiner looks at who'll be protesting - and why. While the Government and the television advertisements tell us it's all about trade, jobs and the opportunity to showcase New Zealand, to some, Apec is a four-letter word. The New Zealand Government is among the greatest cheerleaders of trade liberalisation and as chair of the Asia Pacific Co-operation group of 21 economies this year, the cheers are getting louder. But the detractors, while small in number, are also capable of making a big noise. The heart of the opposition to Apec is the Apec Monitoring Group and its best-known voice is Aziz Choudry, the anti-free trade activist who became a minor celebrity after the SIS broke into his Christchurch home during a 1996 Apec Trade Ministers meeting. The blundered break-in - fellow free-trade opponent and Canterbury University lecturer David Small caught the spies in mid-snoop - triggered a law change giving secret agents powers to break into homes and a lawsuit against the SIS. But the "the grumpy geriatric communists who tuck our shirts into our underpants and don't like Apec" - as Choudry recalls Labour MP and World Trade Organisation aspirant Mike Moore describing them - may have an odd bedfellow come September. World leaders beware: the farmers are coming. The spectre of tractors clogging up central Auckland streets at the leaders' meeting in September is a real one, after the US recently announced it would impose tariffs on New Zealand lamb. Marlborough farmer Andrew Barker is organising a nationwide tractor drive to protest the tariff decision, despite local police warning he may spend the duration of the leaders' meeting behind bars. Labour agriculture spokesman Jim Sutton says after the lamb decision US President Bill Clinton is not welcome at APEC, but Federated Farmers president Malcolm Bailey wants him there. Clinton should come and visit some sheep farms and see why New Zealanders are "the best lamb producers in the world" and that to impose tariffs on them is "stupid and unfair," he says. While the farmers have their specific grievance, the broad, philosophical opposition to free trade lies with the Apec Monitoring Group. Established in 1994 after an Apec meeting in Indonesia, the group works closely with a number of others including Corso, Gatt Watchdog and the Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa. These groups highlight the downside of free trade, illustrated again recently by the closure of Wellington-based light bulb manufacturer Zelma which said its demise was linked to tariff reduction. The monitoring group put it this way during a protest against the Women in Apec conference recently held in Wellington (which it dubbed the Miss-leaders meeting): "Apec supports the agenda of big business to make profits at any cost. It is part of the international network of treaties, forums and institutions that seek to subjugate the many for the enrichment of the few." But opposition to Apec has its limits, Choudry says. "Everything that we are planning is open, lawful and non-violent. There may be other organisations and groups that will be doing things in relation to Apec but our main focus has been on education through forums [and] through media." Choudry says the anti-Apec groups are non-hierarchical and comprise academics, union and community leaders who rely on donations from individuals and organisations for financial support. Membership is "hard to quantify" but an anti-APEC meeting can draw up to 300, he says. Choudry believes opposition to APEC is growing after it moved from "shooting itself in the foot to putting the gun in its mouth" over the issue of US tariffs on New Zealand lamb. "You've got the most powerful country in the world saying 'do as I say, not as I do' and New Zealand is one of the true believers (in free trade) squeaking on the edges saying 'follow us'," he says. The APEC meetings being held in New Zealand are a really good opportunity for people to be debating economic models. We are being told [there is] only one [option]. I'm sorry but to say that there is no alternative is just childishly ridiculous." From gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Wed Jul 21 15:11:04 1999 From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Wed, 21 Jul 1999 18:11:04 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1206] GATT Watchdog on Mike Moore and WTO Message-ID: <6w7qBF1w165w@corso.ch.planet.gen.nz> GATT Watchdog PO Box 1905 Christchurch 8015 Aotearoa (NZ) Media Release For Immediate Use 21 July 1999 One small step for Mr Moore, one giant leap towards dismantling the WTO News that Mike Moore has been informally approved at a meeting of the WTO General Council to take over the role of WTO Director-General will be too late to fix the deep fissures among the 134-member organisation, says GATT Watchdog. "But we think he's undoubtedly the best man for the job. Mr Moore has always proved to be at the extreme end of the spectrum in ideological fervour about free trade and investment. At a time when people are questioning the drive to speed up and expand economic liberalisation, with APEC looking so fragile that it has lost almost all credibility with free marketeers and critics alike, having a true believer in the globalisation gospel as the figurehead of the WTO will be very helpful in bringing things to a head and will no doubt speed up our own goal of delegitimising and dismantling the WTO and other forums which promote market models of economic development as if they are the only alternative." says Aziz Choudry, a spokesman for the coalition, which has campaigned against the GATT/WTO for a decade. "Despite the claims that Mr Moore and his fellow travellers make about globalisation, the narrow economic dogma that the WTO promotes and enforces is contributing to conflicts around the world, from the US-EU banana dispute, to the spread of communal violence in many countries hit by austerity measures and economic liberalisation, to the ongoing conflict in Chiapas, Mexico in the wake of the coming into force of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Many of them have their roots in the increasing global economic instability and inequity between and within nations as a result of the acceleration of free market, trade and investment measures which the WTO promotes." "Those tensions will colour the upcoming APEC Leaders Circus in Auckland, and the so-called Millennium Round of WTO negotiations when it kicks off in Seattle this November." "The apparent WTO leadership compromise solution merely glosses over the divisions, marginalisation and frustration among a growing number of countries who have been questioning who benefits from existing commitments to economic liberalisation. Naturally, the New Zealand Government and others who still believe in freemarket fairy tales do not want to deal with this. And the Mike Moore WTO story gives Jenny Shipley's beleaguered spin doctors another chance to try and woo a public grown weary of wild and wacky promises about free trade in the weeks prior to the APEC Summit, without dealing with any of the real issues." "There is already pressure from "developed" nations to expand the GATT/WTO agriculture, services and intellectual property agreements, and to introduce issues like competition policy, government procurement, and possibly try to resurrect an MAI-style agreement on investment within the WTO. By contrast, a number of Third World governments have repeatedly expressed their scepticism and concern about the supposed benefits of existing trade and investment liberalisation commitments, and warn that a new negotiating round with new issues will further marginalise them." "Look at the US track record on trade - one of Mr Moore's strongest backers. It bullies the rest of the world to open up their markets, yet consistently refuses to follow the same economic recipe itself. That is the reality of the multilateral trade framework under the WTO - protection for the powerful - market discipline, regardless of the costs, for the rest", said Mr Choudry. For further comment, ph Aziz Choudry, GATT Watchdog (03) 3662803 From gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Wed Jul 21 16:46:19 1999 From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Wed, 21 Jul 1999 19:46:19 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1207] Mike Moore - New WTO D-G? Message-ID: For more information on Mike Moore, read on Please feel free to crosspost, forward etc New Zealander Mike Moore appears likely to become the next Director-General of the WTO. Who is he? Moore was the caretaker (perhaps better described as the undertaker) Prime Minister in the dying days of the Labour Government which introduced Rogernomics (radical neo- liberalism) into New Zealand, having deceived the electorate in 1984. In 1990 it was emphatically thrown out; Moore was put in by his party just before the election (the third leader in short succession) to try to prevent the loss being too great. He has never repudiated the policies followed by Lange/Douglas Labour Government, and remains, awkwardly, as the core of the right wing of the Labour Party. In his campaign for the WTO leadership he appears to have gathered a reputation for being a trade unionist perhaps because it suits the current U.S. agenda of token recognition of labour rights in trade agreements. It is not clear where he got this reputation: he does not have that reputation at home. He has been a professional politician for most of his life. Immediately after leaving school, he had about seven years of work experience as a freezing worker (meat packer to people in the U.S.) and social worker. He became New Zealand's youngest member of parliament at age 23 in 1972, and has remained so with a break of only three years early in that period. While advocating some mild government intervention at home, and coupling that with a populist position on crime and indigenous (Maori) rights, but strong anti-racism, he is still a fundamentalist on globalisation, and supports a monetarist line and an open economy. Some of his quotes and media statements relevant to the WTO appointment follow below. For example, the position he recommended to the Labour caucus on the MAI, as their spokesperson on Foreign Affairs and Trade, contained passages quoted below (along with vitriolic, and inaccurate attacks on named opponents of the MAI). His increasing isolation in the Labour Party was emphasised by their overruling his position, which asked only for reservations for the Treaty of Waitangi (which protects Maori rights), and the right to impose special conditions on privatisation of assets. The Labour Party adopted a position of support for the MAI, as long as it protected New Zealand's current (very weak) foreign investment provisions, had recognition of labour rights and environmentally sustainable development in the preamble, a commitment "not to drive down" environmental or labour conditions, reservation of Maori rights under the Treaty of Waitangi, and debate on it in Parliament. They supported it being moved to the WTO, and "matched by ongoing work" in the ILO and UN Earth Summits. It is important to note that even this weak and equivocal position was a strengthening of Moore's recommendation, forced on the Labour Party by strong opposition to the MAI in New Zealand. Moore's later statements often avoided expressing his party's reservations. Moore is an ardent supporter of the Bretton Woods institutions and the WTO. He has a naFrom "MAI - Proposed Caucus Position" by Moore, 17 November 1997 "The MAI's central purpose is to ensure that foreign investors are not the subject of discriminatory or xenophobic behaviour on the part of governments in the host country... This is not a new wave of colonisation or the rise of corporatist world government. The Agreement is designed to PROTECT and ENCOURAGE foreign investment because it is such investment that has helped fuel global economic growth and the increasing globalisation of wealth. Fifty years ago the United States was literally the only wealthy nation; now Europe, North Asia, and South East Asia can all genuinely be described as wealthy regions, with Latin America and East Asia fast becoming economic powerhouses as well. Foreign investment is the instrument of this economic success, and international agreements liberalising trade and investment have played key roles: the GATT, APEC, ASEAN, NAFTA, MERCASUR, CER it could even be argued that the post- war Marshall Plan had this effect (from which the OECD was formed). Small nations need institutional rules. "The MAI will be of the greatest long-term benefit to developing nations. They are not currently covered by negotiations but will be anxious to join up as soon as they can... Over the past two decades, open economies grew by an average of 4.5% while other economies grew by an average of 0.7%. Developing countries now account for one-quarter of world trade where the figure was 20% a decade ago. At present rates it will reach 40% in 2010 and 50% in 2020. What has fuelled this growth? Liberalisation of markets for their goods, and a TREBLING of foreign direct investment. "The MAI is good for the developing world. It regulates foreign investment and subjects it to internationally agreed and transparent processes. It encourages infrastructure investment by offering some assurances against changes in volatile political landscapes. As a direct result, it will also therefore have the effect of discouraging short-term, speculative investment made often with the collusion of corrupt local officials. It is this short-term investment that all too often damages the economy and the environment of the host economy. As long as investment in the developing world is beholden to political interference and patronage, it will engender corruption and unethical practice..." (Moore's emphasis.) >From an address by Moore to a Department of Economics, University of Canterbury seminar on "International Liberalisation", 25 August 1997. "Crazy literature is being sent to MPs by wacko, conspiracy types suggesting the MIA [sic] will copyright the DNA of Maoris, sell our National Parks and there's a secret deal being, or even done... "The [MAI] agreement sets firm rules that will work to the advantage of small and developing countries. Small guys need the Police, need clear rules, or they are picked off by the big guys. "I have fought for economic openings, not only because I believe it is good for New Zealand, but because I believe it is the best way of assisting poor and developing countries. A deeper motivation is that it will build a more secure, safe, peaceful and growing world... "Internationalism and globalisation will be to the 21st Century what Nationalism was to the 20th Century. Thus mankind has learnt the most profound lessons of this century from the great depression and the second world war. It can even be argued that the twin tyrannies of our century, Fascism and Marxism came out of the economic failure of the great depression. The great depression was accelerated and made deeper by protectionist legislation, in the United States and elsewhere. During the second world war, the great war time leaders met to discuss a post war world. In that post war world they dreamed of great and noble institutions, such as the United Nations, the World Bank, IMF, and the World Trade Organisation. I see economic liberalism as continuing that high ideal. Democratic global institutions are needed to give legal life to globalisation. No Nation, not even the great Nations can prosper alone or isolated. Pollution, aids, cancer, or refugee problems cannot be solved by one Nation alone. "Far from weakening the integrity of a nation's state and allowing the great multi-nationals to ravage the world, I believe the GATT and the World Trade Organisation does the opposite. Small countries need rules. World Trade Organisation rules prevent the super economies from muscling and pushing around the smaller nations... Far from exploiting developing countries, the opposite is true. It's developing countries with their tropical products and manufacturing skills that have the most to gain..." "The lesson of the last 25 years tells us that no individual country can anymore successfully prime an economic pump, even Mitterand discovered this in the 80s when, by priming the French pump, all he did was flood his country with imports from Italy and from Germany. He reversed that position. Tony Blair, a modern Social Democratic Labour Leader has discovered that too. The irony is that Blair's Government is going through the same process as the Labour Government did in New Zealand. He is called progressive, we were called reactionary. The 1987 stock market crash was greater and deeper than the Wall Street crash of the 20s. But, the world did not plunge into lasting depressions. Leaders nerves held, there wasn't an orgy of protectionism and tariff increases which exacerbated the 20s crash. Governments now have Reserve Banks. The G7, GATT, World Bank, IMF held firm. We got through it, we have learnt." Press releases from http://www.newsroom.co.nz/main.html Moore - US Trade Negotiations Press Release: New Zealand Labour Party Date: Tuesday, 11 November 1997 Time: 5:36 pm NZT RT HON MIKE MOORE LABOUR'S SPOKESPERSON ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS & TRADE MP for WAIMAKARIRI "The decision by the US Congress to deny President Clinton the right to negotiate trade treaties is a setback, but not a fatal one. My understanding is that the President will win this authority early next year," Mike Moore Labour's Foreign Affairs and Trade spokesperson said today. Mr Moore said: "It's inconceivable that President Clinton would be the first President since Harry Truman not to have this authority. The US Congress gave its President the right to negotiate trade treaties, but review that right every now and again. Congress demands the right to ratify trade treaties or to reject them, they cannot amend them. This is the commonsense approach, because in President Kennedy's time, Congress were amending treaties to protect vested interests. That became impossible. "I support the New Zealand Government in investigating a free trade arrangement with America. There were discussions in the corridors about this during my time as Minister. New Zealand would be an overwhelming winner out of it. "However, the Minister of International Trade, Dr Smith, ought to realise that times have changed. We now have an MMP Parliament and there ought to be Select Committee consideration of the virtues of such an agreement. The debate on the MAI shows how things can get out of hand and be misunderstood if we are not open about negotiations. This will improve the quality of Government. "I also would like to know why the Minister, Dr Smith, before the negotiations began, said that he would be prepared to abolish the Dairy Board's monopoly on exports if requested by the United States. It may well be a position we arrive at, but playing the strongest cards before the talks begin is a curious position. A free trade arrangement with the US is a possibility, although Chile and Singapore joining such an agreement should be done in parallel. It should not contradict our APEC ambition. We should go ahead with it, despite the reluctance of Australia to follow," concluded Mr Moore. Moore: Euro good, but an ANZAC currency? Tuesday, 29 December 1998, 10:34 am Press Release: New Zealand Labour Party Labour MP Mike Moore said today that the implementation of a European common currency this Friday is a milestone in the history of a continent where for centuries the great white tribes have been at each other's throats. "The advent of the Euro will see one of the most profound and historic decisions in the turbulent history of Europe implemented. "This is good for Europe and therefore good for the rest of the world. Where Europe has integrated there is peace in peace and prosperity, where it has not there is still tension, lower growth, injustice, even war. "This great event will probably go unnoticed, as the war in Kosovo makes better headlines. Wars and conflict have been the historic norm in Europe for centuries, while peace has historically been unusual. "The advent of a common currency in Europe will excite lazy thinkers to talk of a common currency in this part of the world - an ANZAC monetary unit for Australia and New Zealand. This idea has been raised before, mainly from Australia. "What they are talking about is not a common currency but New Zealand having Australia's currency. That's not on, it's not a starter. The Australian dollar is driven by different imperatives and a different market and product mix from New Zealand's. "A common currency is a different matter and Australia would never agree to such an arrangement. This would mean the two countries would have to agree on deficit, debt and even tax regimes and tax levels. "Australia wouldn't surrender these decisions to joint agreement with New Zealand as an equal partner. Our self interest dictates that we should have a dollar and wage rates beneath those of Australia. We have to be more competitive, more aggressive because Australia has economies of scale and mineral resources beyond our imagination. The attacker has the initiative, the advantage. The small guy must be smarter and New Zealanders are," Mike Moore said. Contact: Mike Moore, 03 352 4696 World economic crisis calls for new approach Sunday, 30 August 1998, 1:59 pm Press Release: New Zealand Labour Party A new form of economic diplomacy is needed to cope with the economic problems faced by the battered economies of Asia, Russia and most likely Latin America, Labour's foreign affairs and trade spokesperson Mike Moore said today. Mike Moore has recently returned from a visit to Mexico, Chile, Uruguay, Peru and Argentina, where he met with foreign, trade and economic ministers, and with the President of Uruguay. "Every nation's prosperity is based on the capacity of its neighbour to purchase. Economic security becomes an issue of political security, and in this regard the IMF's work in our region is as important as that of the US Seventh Fleet," Mike Moore said. "Russia's problems are predictable. New Zealand is a shareholder in the IMF and World Bank, and we are respected members of the WTO. All of these organisations hold the key to stability, growth and thus security. "New Zealand can provide leadership. We face our biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s and things could so horribly wrong. But hopefully we have learnt. "I don't believe policy makers have though the issues through. I've spent the last few years writing a book entitled A Brief History of the Future, to be published this Thursday, 3 September, which covers these new economic conditions. "New Zealand's representatives to the IMF and the World Bank should insist no new money goes to Russia without Russia agreeing to basic domestic reform, such as tax reform and bankruptcy laws. Tax in Russia currently represents only 10% of GDP, and only 17% of Russian companies paid their taxes fully and on time last year. "Corruption is endemic. Russia is a great power and her collapse will have a severe impact on the European Union, particularly Germany. "Here in New Zealand politicians were once mesmerised by the domino effect on military security in our region. This proved to be nonsense and now the greater danger is the domino effect of individual economies in this global age when markets are in a state of free fall. "The generally shallow response by many New Zealand politicians to these developments is dangerous. They can be forgiven for not knowing the answers but it is unforgivable not to know which questions to ask," Mike Moore said. Contact: Mike Moore, 03 352 4696 US withdrawal from MAI disappointing Press Release: New Zealand Labour Party Date: Sunday, 15 Febuary 1998 Time: 4:03 pm NZT It is disappointing that the United States is signalling it is not going to sign the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) because a successful negotiation, given appropriate reservations, would have stimulated the world's investment growth and thus jobs, Labour's foreign affairs and trade spokesperson Mike Moore said today. Mr Moore said he didn't believe the negotiations were over because the world needed rules on investment just as it has rules on airlines, fishing and most other trading areas. "However, each country has to reserve aspects of its economy. For New Zealand it is the Treaty, public health system and our overseas investment laws. There are other areas, of course, that we would reserve. "From a distance, without checking with the OECD which I will do tomorrow, it looks like another battle between Europe and the US. The Europeans have raised the issue of the trade embargo with Cuba and other trade difficulties with Libya and Iraq because US domestic laws are being used to impose US policies world-wide. "This is not appropriate action by the US. We cannot expect countries to apply their domestic law, which is motivated by political imperatives, on other countries. This is another reason why we need an international agreement. "However, the Cuban trade ban is already the subject of a WTO investigation and is probably illegal. We need to hope, particularly because of the Asian crisis, that negotiators in Geneva get a lot closer. The MAI, with appropriate reservations, is no threat to New Zealand. Indeed we would not need to change one item of domestic law to accommodate the agreement. "What we need is neighbours and trading partners who are prospering and enjoying growth because of the global economy. Every nation would welcome jobs based on the capacity of their partners to succeed. "It will be disappointing also if agreement is not reached because later on many developing countries will want to sign up. The absence of this agreement gives more power to the already powerful corporations and powerful countries. They can and have pressured governments to accept investment on certain criteria. This agreement would assist in ensuring that all countries and companies are treated equally. Thus this is an advantage for poorer countries and weaker economies," Mr Moore said. ----- Quotes from Mike Moore's "A Brief History of the Future" Compiled by Dennis Small In Aotearoa/New Zealand, Mike Moore is notorious for a string of grossly simplistic, self-serving books. His latest is "A Brief History of the Future: Citizenship of the Millennium", Shoal Bay Press, Christchurch, 1998, ISBN 0 908704 77 1. It is a very handy source for revealing Moore quotes (some very ironic). Overall, his writing is full of contradictions which reflects his notoriously muddled mind. Here are some expressions of his views: (1) "Western capitalism and values have triumphed for the present . . . Strategic resources are safe." (p.117) (2) "However, it is clear that the powerful elite of business people, politicians and intellectuals are out of touch with the general population, the people who can see the pain of these policies but not the gain. The elite throughout the world have more in common with each other than with their constituents and shareholders. This is not new; it was also true of the princes and merchants of earlier times." (p.9) (3) "Critics of the WTO are often heard to claim that it serves only the interests of the large trading powers. Of course, the larger powers exert a stronger influence than the smaller powers. A system that failed to reflect certain realities would not command the confidence of the major powers and would drift quickly into the irrelevance that frankly captures so many other international organisations." (p. 73) (4) "Like it or not, the world economy will always drive us; we will never drive it." (p.49) (5) "Our living standards - how we eat, our entertainment trends, what we wear, even what we believe - are frequently beyond our control." (p.50) (6) "Power doesn't corrupt: it's what politicians do to get power that corrupts." (p.107) (7) "It's not that government in principle is bad. It's just that governments everywhere are incapable of controlling the changes that are being thrust upon us." (p.107) (8) Critics of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are: " . . a few deranged misfits on the edges of obscure universities, people who tuck their shirts into their underpants, the remnants of pressure groups and a few geriatrics who claim that Marxism, like Christianity, has not been tried yet." (p.71) (9) Moore goes along with the "megatrends" predicted by John Naibitt and co., including: "the triumph of the individual"; "free-market socialism"; and "the privatisation of the welfare state" (pp.26,27) (10) Moore quotes enthusiastically from "The Sovereign Individual" by James Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg, e.g. p.89 where opponents of globalisation are condemned as "reactionary losers". (11) Moore on old-style protectionism: "Vested interests will always conspire against the rest of us to protect themselves. It's when they combine to control both the market and the politicians that we have to fear." (p.41) (12) Moore approvingly quotes US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright: "If we choose to hide behind walls rather than tear them down, our products will face higher tariffs . . . we will have no success at all in promoting higher environmental and labour standards." (p.46) (13) "Increased equality and improved human rights will also flow from the liberalising of markets." (p.59) (14) Moore again quotes Madeleine Albright in the claim that: "The evidence is clear that globalisation is not lowering standards around the world, it is raising them." (p.52) (15) "Far from weakening the integrity of a nation's state and allowing the great multinationals to ravage the world, I believe the GATT and the WTO do the opposite." (p.72) (16) Moore on the MAI: "It's about jobs, a safer, cleaner environment, and a more secure, stable, global political economic and social environment. The MAI was designed to protect and encourage foreign investment because it is such investment that has helped fuel global economic growth and the increasing globalisation of wealth." (p.51) "Investment agreements like the MAI will be of the greatest long-term benefit to developing nations." (p.56) (17) " . . . I have no doubt that overall, trade liberalisation around the world creates jobs, raises income levels and gives workers caught in poverty traps in developing countries the means to extricate themselves in the long term." (p.54) (18) Part-time jobs have burgeoned in all Western countries . . . Working conditions are eroded . . . Productivity has become uncoupled from employment . . . New technologies and the international competitive drive mean downsizing to seize and maintain a competitive cost advantage." (p.104) (19) "Wealthy companies often appear keen to take advantage of lower environmental and labour standards in developing countries in order to increase profits which could be seen as exploitative." (p.74) (20) "Commerce, given the correct economic signals, has the ability to adapt and create new products and innovations to achieve more sustainable results. When governments try to control and subsidise outcomes, they make things worse and stall progress." (p.171) From gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Thu Jul 22 17:16:05 1999 From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1999 20:16:05 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1208] APEC Monitoring Group Website Message-ID: The APEC Monitoring Group Website is being continually updated. Programme and registration details for the Alternatives To The APEC Agenda forum (Sept 10-12, Auckland) can be found at this site, as well as an ever-expanding range of articles, media statements and other resources on APEC and globalisation. By this weekend much more additional material will have been posted. URL is www.apec.gen.nz From gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Fri Jul 23 09:23:10 1999 From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Fri, 23 Jul 1999 12:23:10 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1209] NZ: APEC - National Business Review Message-ID: The National Business Review July 23 1999 Private BIN Roughing it Apec style Our usually reliable police informant, Inspector Knacker, reports further examples of wanton excess. This time it's mollycoddling plods on Apec yawn-fest duty. Instead of head-and-toeing it in campervans, tents, decommissioned warships or under park benches, police softies will live in two- to four-star-rated digs, complete with two cooked meals and "one boxed meal of high standard". Usually uniformed coppers required for dress-up delegation security have been promised $100 towards suit hire or purchase - with Hallensteins quick to offer a discounted "one-size-fits-all" job lot. Police bosses say they will pick up the tab for ordinary suit cleaning if officers fall in the mud or have eggs and other messy objects thrown at them. Police required to sleep away from home during Apec will get $35 a day. This generosity, says Inspector Knacker, is not expected to apply to police Commissioner Peter Doone, who last weekend quit his family home to move into the Tinakori Rd, Wellington, love nest of new partner, Robyn Johnstone, corporate communications manager at the Land Transport Safety Authority. From gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Fri Jul 23 11:14:32 1999 From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Fri, 23 Jul 1999 14:14:32 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1210] NZ Govt Propaganda on APEC Message-ID: More New Zealand Government "spin" on APEC Embargoed until delivery May be subject to change at delivery RT HON JENNY SHIPLEY PRIME MINISTER Keynote address to APEC SYMPOSIUM ON THE ASIAN ECONOMIES Dai-ichi Hotel, Tokyo, Shimbashi 9.40am Friday 23 July 1999 (Japan Time) Mr Chairman, =20 Ambassadors,=20 Representatives of the media,=20 Ladies and Gentlemen.=20 Good morning. I should like to extend my thanks to the organisers and sponsors of this significant Symposium. It is a great pleasure to be in Tokyo once more. Yesterday I had the pleasure of having very productive discussions with Prime Minister Obuchi and key Japanese Ministers. I am delighted on this, my second visit to Japan as Prime Minister of New Zealand, to address this Symposium on APEC and the Asian economies. I welcome this opportunity to outline New Zealand=92s view of APEC and the Asian Economies. The Governments of Thailand and Japan are to be congratulated, for the initiative you have taken to bring together this group of speakers and delegates. You have challenged yourselves to consider and discuss the role that APEC can play in the recovery of Asian economies. It is an important and exciting challenge. In less than five months we enter a new millennium. It is right that we look back as we look ahead with confidence and enthusiasm. There is much upon which we can build. Just last week, I had the pleasure of launching a study of the way the relationship between New Zealand and Japan has unfolded over the last 150 years. But it has been only over the last 30 years that it has expanded and matured. This study, funded by former Prime Minister Murayama=92s Peace Friendship an= d Exchange programme, reminded me how much all of us, as Asia Pacific economies, have systematically developed our links over recent decades. =20 In the case of New Zealand and Japan we have moved from two countries who hardly knew each other, to regional partners. Around the region, we are entering a new millennium woven together by a wide and colourful fabric of people to people links, trade, investment and an emerging sense of being an Asia Pacific community. We are enriched both by our diversity and the values and policies we increasingly hold in common. =20 Ten years ago this year, the enlightened development of APEC was established to be an engine for closer cooperation between all our members economies. APEC=92s goal of a region bound together by free and open trade and investment has, during this decade, brought real improvement in the standard of living for our people. In the past two years, however, APEC has been severely tested by the financial crisis that hit all our economies. I believe that the responses we have made to the crisis- individually and together - have proved the worth of the consensus and cooperation which underpins all of APEC=92s work. Once economies got past the shock of the crisis, much effort has been put into finding durable solutions. When APEC Leaders met last year in Kuala Lumpur they emphasised the important role of open markets in reinvigorating economic growth in the APEC region. This is the right approach which is well supported by empirical research. A recent IMF study of 110 developing countries for the period 1985-95 found that countries with open trade positions, stable macro economic policy settings and relatively small government tended to grow faster. Reflecting this emphasis, one of New Zealand=92s goals this year, as Chair o= f APEC, is to expand opportunities for people to do business in the region. This means opening markets and keeping them open, as well as reducing barriers to trade and investment within and between our economies. =20 APEC members have agreed that they will take individual actions to open their markets. Through these actions, which form the cornerstone of APEC=92= s liberalisation agenda, APEC has made good progress. Far more than many commentators gave credit for. This year, for example, 14 members have implemented tariff reductions, 14 have liberalised their investment regimes and 17 have announced measures in the area of competition policy and/or deregulation.=20 Given the importance of open and strong markets to the prosperity of us all, I want to acknowledge today the strong support our host, Japan, is giving to the pursuit of APEC=92s goals. Japan=92s economic size and strength, and the success of its domestic reforms, will be critical in the return of sustainable growth to the rest of the region. Much is expected. As the world=92s second largest economy, Japan=92s support for the launching= of new broad based multilateral trade negotiations is also crucial in keeping the world trading system open and dynamic. Collectively, APEC members are helping that task by working to make trade easier. For example, by the end of this year most APEC members will have automated their export and import customs clearance procedures. This will speed up the process of customs clearance and reduce the associated costs. = =20 Studies suggest that the gains from these types of initiatives may outweigh the gains from opening markets by a factor of about two to one. APEC Ministers will consider in September options for broadening and deepening APEC=92s work in this area, to the mutual benefit of member economies. At the global level, APEC Ministers =96 who met just last month in Auckland = =96 have called for the launch of new broad-based negotiations to further liberalise global trade. Ministers also agreed that industrial products should be included in these negotiations and that we should aim to conclude the process within three years. This is an important and powerful development. When APEC speaks with one voice it is a powerful voice indeed - for together we represent half the world=92s output and population, and its leading industrialised and developing economies. =20 The inclusion of industrial goods to the other areas where APEC has sought early voluntary sectoral liberalisation in the WTO, now adds critical mass as APEC engages other WTO members =96 and in particular the European Union = =96 in steps towards further global trade liberalisation. Ensuring the support and participation of developing countries in the new WTO Round is crucial.=20 Ensuring economies are able to participate through access to markets is critical if we are to bring many people into the real economy who are currently excluded. The alleviation of poverty through increased per capita incomes, secured through trade, new jobs, and increased development, must be the social dividend which the new Round delivers, particularly for developing= countries. APEC=92s work programme can and must help developing countries lift their growth, incomes and employment in the new WTO Round. The announcement, last night from Geneva of the split-term appointment of Mike Moore and Dr Supachai, respectively, as Director-General of the WTO is also good news for world trade, and for APEC. Two excellent candidates, both from the Asia-Pacific region will now, in succession, be responsible for leading the WTO=92s work through the new= Round. APEC economies can be well satisfied with the calibre of these appointments. The APEC Food System proposal is another important focus for APEC this year.= =20 The proposal, developed initially by the business sectors of APEC, seeks a robust regional food system that supports rural infrastructure development, sharing of new technology and promotion of trade in food products.=20 Over time we hope that the food systems proposal, alongside strengthened economic and technical co-operation between our economies, will help us achieve the full gains in prospect from APEC=92s free and open trade and investment goal.=20 Opening markets and keeping them open is an essential factor in reinvigorating growth. But no less significant =96 as illustrated by the events of the financial crisis =96 is ensuring that markets function effectively. This is the aim o= f New Zealand=92s second theme for 1999: Strengthening the role of markets. New Zealand hopes that this work will help APEC economies with the process of structural reform.=20 As a first step, I will be proposing, when we meet in September, that Leaders endorse a set of voluntary competition and regulatory principles. = =20 These principles will stress the need for markets to be open, transparent and well governed. We see such principles as forming an economic policy "toolbox" - a set of policy approaches that economies can use in developing domestic regulatory policy in an increasingly globalised economic= environment. Japan=92s own experience underlines the value of competitive markets. = Strong domestic competition within Japan played an important role in helping its household electronics and car industries become world leaders. In the US the same point can be made in respect of aviation, telecommunications, financial services, and computers. =20 Our strengthening markets initiative in APEC seeks to foster the benefits of a strong competitive process in all sectors of the economy, recognising that each has different circumstances.=20 As a second step, APEC is working to strengthen financial markets. =20 APEC has an important complementary role to play alongside the work underway in the G-7 and elsewhere to reform the global financial system. =20 Given APEC=92s unique membership and experience, New Zealand as Chair will want to ensure that there are opportunities for contributing our region=92s perspectives to the debate. =20 If the recent financial crisis has taught us anything it is that the real issues are as much domestic as they are international. More than anything else, the stability of the global financial system will flow from policies and practices in our domestic economies. =20 Thirdly, strong corporate governance has an important role, that needs to be emphasised.=20 I understand that private sector leaders in Japan have recently formed a group to pursue reform of Japanese corporate governance arrangements, strengthen the relationship between shareholders and managers, and improve corporate accountability and accounting in line with international best practice. =20 These and other areas of progress are exactly the approach we seek to encourage through APEC - positive peer review to improve market functioning. Through co-operation, the strengthening of information, technical assistance, and practical experience, progress can be made. When we look back on 1999 I expect it will be seen as the year that we all turned the corner towards sustainable economic recovery in the Asia Pacific region. =20 Already, the signs are emerging that the worst of the crisis that engulfed us in 1997 is over. Indeed, some very positive signs are emerging. But, we must not be complacent for there is still much to be done. I have no doubt that APEC has helped governments in particular to find the policy measures, and the political encouragement, to press ahead with needed reforms. All of us =96 be we in government or business =96 have had to take difficult decisions since 1997. We now have some satisfaction in the success that is now apparent. We have had to change the ways we govern and do business, and change is never easy. =20 But we are seeing results. The growth, confidence and investment which is now returning to our economies is, I believe, more soundly and sustainably based than at any time in the past 30 years. We must work to lock this progress in by action across APEC and with member economies. Much hard work lies ahead if we are to consolidate these hard won gains. =20 We can look ahead with a growing sense of confidence in the strength of the links between us, and the realisation that if we keep to the path of increased links between our economies, and strengthened markets, then we will all benefit. The Government sector and private sector both have an important role to play. Governments will often only act when third party support for such action is apparent. Equally, the private sector will only retain its confidence in Governments if we are capable of responding within our respective economies in a way that is relevant and effective. This is the challenge. At APEC this year, which in addition to the Economic Leader=92s meeting we hope to have greater contact and interaction between leaders and the private sector CEOs than ever before. Just as your Symposium is meeting the challenge, so, I believe, will APEC= =9299. I look forward to the presentation of the results of this Symposium to this year=92s Economic Leaders=92 meeting, which I=92m sure will illustrate the= point. As Chair of APEC for 1999, you can be assured of New Zealand=92s support and determination, and interest in spreading the word of the discussions you are engaged in today, and the innovative ideas and solutions you may= propose. I wish you well in your deliberations. Thank you. <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> Peace Movement Aotearoa PO Box 9314, Wellington, Aotearoa / New Zealand tel +64 4 382 8129, fax +64 4 382 8173, pma@xtra.co.nz http://www.converge.org.nz/pma/ the national networking group for peace people <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> From gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Fri Jul 23 12:06:37 1999 From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Fri, 23 Jul 1999 15:06:37 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1211] New Head of WTO Message-ID: For people who want to see how his hometown newspaper views him, "compromise" WTO Director-General (as of 1 Sep 99) Mike Moore is the subject of today's editorial in The Press. It's online at www.press.co.nz Aziz Choudry GATT Watchdog 23 July 1999 From gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Mon Jul 26 14:07:22 1999 From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1999 17:07:22 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1212] NZ: SIS Law Message-ID: 25 July 1999 MEDIA RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE USE SIS Bill: Government & Pals About To Do a "No. 2" On Us In Time For APEC The victim of an illegal Security Intelligence Service breakin, whose legal case has sparked two amendments to the Security Intelligence Service Act is throughly unimpressed by the latest version of the SIS Amendment (no 2) Bill expected to be debated and passed in Parliament shortly. =20 "The SIS has not been reined in by these recent legislative amendments. Quite the opposite - these law changes are designed to expand, not limit, the powers of the SIS. Try as she might to reassure people that critics of APEC will not be subject to SIS snooping, Jenny Shipley cannot hide the fact that both amendment bills have been rushed through explicitly in order to legitimate further SIS break-ins before September=92s Leaders Summit. An= d it was the Prime Minister herself, and various National, Labour, and ACT MPs who first linked the perceived need to legalise SIS break-ins to APEC in parliamentary debates and in the media, not me, GATT Watchdog, the APEC Monitoring Group or our allies. When the APEC circus ends, the law will remain =96 with the SIS above the law," said Aziz Choudry. "The tweaking of the definition of "security" to distinguish between perceived "domestic" and "foreign" or "foreign-influenced" threats does nothing to tighten up the controversial "economic and international wellbeing" wording which many organisations have roundly condemned".=20 "Who knows what or who will be deemed to fit this new category? And who will oversee the SIS and its Minister who will retain sole authority for issuing "foreign" warrants? Governments have often justified security crackdowns against domestic dissenters on the basis of spurious claims of foreign control or influence. Who will scrutinise the activities of the SIS in this regard?" "The Minister and the SIS repeatedly say "trust us". Why should we?" =20 "The supposed statutory checks and balances on the SIS did not work as soon as they were put to the test shortly after their 1996 revamp. Nothing in the legislative amendments makes them work now." =20 "They are a fiction. They remain non-existent." "The Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security was unwilling or unable even to admit the involvement of the Service in his report on the bungled 1996 operation. It took legal action to get an admission from the Crown that it was indeed the SIS =96 and that the entry was illegal." "That someone has to take legal action against the SIS to get this far is positive proof that the Inspector-General=92s office is toothless and the oversight mechanisms fundamentally flawed."=20 Mr Choudry is unimpressed by a "sweetener" amendment to the reporting requirements of the SIS suggested in the bill which is expected to be debated and get its third reading in Parliament this week. =20 "I think that Privacy Commissioner Bruce Slane overstates the significance of the suggested reporting requirements which, if accepted would require fuller annual reports to be tabled by the SIS. All things considered this is a very minor concession. Its value is more symbolic than substantive- and doesn=92t apply to "foreign warrants" in any case." "This revised bill does not address concerns about the SIS's role in surveilling people and organisations engaged in lawful political activities. Along with its companion amendment, it is a further affront to basic civil and political rights and another step down the road of criminalising dissent", he said.=20 For further comment, contact Aziz Choudry (03) 3662803 From putratan at indosat.net.id Tue Jul 27 14:47:02 1999 From: putratan at indosat.net.id (NSPU) Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1999 12:47:02 +0700 Subject: [asia-apec 1213] [Fwd: Results of Indonesian Election 99] Message-ID: <379D47D6.C695F55E@indosat.net.id> Here we send the results of Indonesian Election 1999. Hopefully these matters are usefull for all of us. M. Harris Putra General Secretary of SPSU Serikat Petani Sumatera Utara/SPSU (North Sumatra Peasant Union/NSPU) Jl. Karya Jasa 58, Pangkalan Masyhur Medan, North Sumatera Indonesia 20143 Tel/Fax: +62 61 7862073 Email: putratan@indosat.net.id ************************************************************ Serikat Petani Sumatera Utara/SPSU (North Sumatra Peasant Union/NSPU) is the federation of peasant organization consists of 94 local peasant organizations in North Sumatera Province as its member. SPSU is declared by the peasant of North Sumatera in Parsariran, South Tapanuli District, North Sumatera Province Indonesia on June 3 1994. SPSU is member of La Via Campesina (International Peasant Movement) at International Level, and member of Consortium for Agrarian Reform (KPA) at National Level. SPSU is founder and member of Federasi Serikat Petani Indonesia/FSPI (Federation of Indonesian Peasant Union/FIPU). FSPI or FIPU declared on July 8th 1998 by several peasant organization of Indonesia. SPSU has two main bodies : Peasant Representative Board as the legislative body and The Peasant Executive Body. Both of them are elected by Congress directly. In order to implement its program SPSU will set up the Special Task Force and recruit the Consulates in local, regional, national, and international level. Special task force and Consulates are the supporting system of The Peasant Executive body consists of everyone and every institutions who concern to the Agrarian Reform, Indigenous People, Sustainable Agriculture, Democracy, and Peasant Movement. ************************************************************ -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: NSPU Subject: Results of Indonesian Election 99 Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1999 12:10:37 +0700 Size: 51166 Url: http://list.jca.apc.org/manage/private/asia-apec/attachments/19990727/c5c5b698/nsmailEM.mht From kevin.li at graduate.hku.hk Tue Jul 27 19:10:10 1999 From: kevin.li at graduate.hku.hk (Li Yuk Shing Kevin) Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1999 18:10:10 +0800 Subject: [asia-apec 1214] A Critical and Strategizing Conference on the Politics of Cost-Benefit Analysis Message-ID: <379D8582.CF2C5901@graduate.hku.hk> ANNOUNCEMENT OF AND INVITATION FOR CONCERNED ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIAL ACTIVISTS AND SCHOLARS A CRITICAL AND STRATEGIZING CONFERENCE ON THE POLITICS OF COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT, USA, 7-10 OCTOBER 1999 SPONSORED BY THE INSTITUTION FOR SOCIAL AND POLICY STUDIES, YALE UNIVERSITY AND CO-ORGANIZED BY THE CORNER HOUSE, UK ----------------------------------------- THE COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS DILEMMA: STRATEGIES AND ALTERNATIVES A conference at Yale University, 7-10 October 1999 Background Recent decades have seen an increasingly unconstructive and acrimonious pattern of social conflict emerge from the expanded use of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) in decision-making in environment and development. Although CBA is intended to help clarify, rationalize, and simplify societal choices, it has often proved to be the case that the more widely it is used, the less credibility it enjoys. On the one hand, the technique has been enlisted by decision-makers around the world as a way of justifying or scrutinizing choices about whether to build dams, roads, and airports; what actions to take over global warming, biodiversity loss, or soil erosion; what health care and occupational safety policies to adopt; how to determine damages for oil spills or toxic leaks; whether to undertake family planning programs; how to regulate pesticide use or dispose of radioactive waste; whether to modify automobile design to save lives; how to use military lands; and so forth. Entrenched in much bureaucratic practice and administrative "common sense" and widely used by lending institutions such as the World Bank, CBA is likely to be applied even more widely in the 21st century. Contributing to its prominence, environmentalists often use it tactically as a way of securing recognition for environmental issues within the terms of mainstream discourse. At the same time, however, cost-benefit analysis faces growing resistance at a variety of levels. Grassroots opponents of roads and hydroelectric dams around the world have persistently contested the ways the technique values land, forests, streams, fisheries and livelihoods, as well as its reliance on unaccountable experts, its neglect of equity issues, and its incompatibility with many forms of reasoned negotiation; ordinary people surveyed by cost-benefit analysts have commonly refused to answer questions about how much money they would pay to save a wilderness or how much they would accept to allow it to be destroyed; Third World delegations to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have angrily rejected a cost-benefit analysis of policy options regarding global warming which valued statistical lives in industrialized and non-industrialized countries differently. In the US, the role of CBA has become, in the words of one prominent legal scholar, "one of the most hotly disputed issues in law and policy" following the Reagan administration's executive orders calling for the application of CBA to all regulatory decisions and legislative proposals. Eminent economists, philosophers, lawyers, anthropologists, sociologists, biologists and political scientists have meanwhile argued that in many cases the technique does not clarify but rather obscures rational deliberative processes involving plural values, faces intractable difficulties regarding predictability, discount rates, and opportunity costs, and is based on a deeply controversial political theory. As one scholar has concluded, "far from resolving controversy, cost-benefit analysis generates it." Although this dilemma is a crucial aspect of contemporary social and environmental conflict worldwide, few systematic attempts have been made to analyze it or to evaluate practical prospects for overcoming it. While many CBA proponents suggest that the answer lies in a combination of further technical refinements of CBA, greater care in its application, and education of the public about its merits, such measures have proved repeatedly ineffective in overcoming resistance to the technique in more than 50 years of attempts. Indeed, the diagnosis that the CBA deadlock is rooted in nothing more than popular misunderstandings of the technique, incorrect application, or technical "bugs", has itself further reinforced opposition to CBA. At the same time, however, CBA's critics have failed to mount a concerted, comprehensive global challenge to the technique which might be effective in, among other things, shifting bureaucrats' and political leaders' allegiance toward less problematic and more democratic decision-making aids. This is for several reasons. First, critical activists, policymakers, and policy advisers, while well-equipped to call attention to problems with particular examples of CBA, usually have little time to step back to evolve a more synoptic understanding of the conflicts the technique engenders. Second, critical academics, while often able to articulate compelling critiques of CBA, often do not engage in much practical strategic thinking on how to promote "alternative", less conflict-ridden decision-making practices which states could deploy. Finally, to a far greater degree than the fairly unitary community of professional practitioners and partisans of CBA, the community of critics of CBA is fragmented and scattered across a huge range of institutions, sites of grassroots opposition, and insular academic disciplines, creating enormous obstacles to sharing, combination and cross-fertilization of ideas, accumulation of practical lessons, and focused communal inquiry into, and activism toward, alternative futures. The Conference On 7-10 October 1999 an interdisciplinary conference will be held at Yale University to probe the roots of the CBA predicament and to mobilize strategic inquiry into how it might be transcended. In terms of content, the conference will elicit, from a wide range of international activists and academics of different generations who have focused on CBA, thoughtful and sustained responses to the conference topic. Present will be not only activists working on issues of dams, agriculture, roads, forests, toxics, nuclear disposal, climate, urban and health policy, etc., but also engaged scholars in history, sociology, anthropology, economics, political science, philosophy, law, environmental studies, public policy, management, and geography, as well as development agency officials. In terms of process, the meeting, by bringing together individuals who have been working in parallel directions but may have not had the chance to benefit from each others' experience and knowledge, will itself provide the conditions for further inquiry and action. The conference will be a forum, for example, at which anti-dam activists may be able to step back from day-to-day work to exchange information on biases and trends in the use of CBA in dam projects with academics who have studied the politics of the technique. By the same token, critics of the use of CBA in (say) occupational health policy may have the time and space to learn from (say) climate activists troubled by the implications of basing global warming policy on the monetary valuation of human lives. It is hoped that all participants, in addition, will benefit from discussion of alternative decision-making practices. In this connection, it is an advantage of the conference that featured speakers are not dogmatic partisans of any particular technique or discipline but bent on open-minded, democratic resolutions to environmental and social conflicts. As a way of supplementing the process of which the conference is a part, a book edited by the conference organizers and containing contributions of participants will also be published, helping to carry the messages of the meeting to new audiences. Finally, and of crucial importance for activists and policymakers, it is hoped that the interacting community which the conference is intended to help seed will become, and become known as, a permanent and ever-evolving resource for those around the world seeking more equitable, democratic, less conflictual forms of making choices about development, environment and health -- an open-ended resource of the kind which cannot be built in any other way than through concrete interactions of the kind the meeting will provide. Opportunities will be provided during the conference, accordingly, for the participants to plan future cooperation in the form of (for example) informal consultations about particular CBAs, further meetings and visits, and the sharing of documents, analyses and other resources. Although both the content and the process of the conference are still in the process of formation, and open to comment and criticism from all participants and interested observers, current plans are that the first two days of the conference will consist of intensive discussion of mostly written materials some of which participants will have had a chance to look at in advance, while the third day will be more strategically oriented. It is expected that a book consisting of some of the contributions to the conference will be assembled and edited after the conference for submission to a publisher. Organization The Yale University Institution for Social and Policy Studies, under whose auspices the conference will be held, was established in 1968 to facilitate interdisciplinary inquiries in the social sciences and research into important public policy arenas. The Institution runs interdisciplinary faculty seminars, research projects, postdoctoral programs, as well as the activities of ISPS's constituent programs, including the Program in Agrarian Studies, the Center for Race, Inequality and Poverty, the Ethics, Politics, and Economics Program, and the Health Policy Scholars Program. Conference organizers are James C. Scott, Eugene Meyer Professor of Political Science, Professor of Anthropology, Chairman of the Council on Southeast Asia Studies and Director of the Program in Agrarian Studies at Yale University; and Larry Lohmann of the Corner House, an independent voluntary organization based in the UK with links to environmental and social activists worldwide; with assistance from M. Kay Mansfield, administrator of Yale's Program in Agrarian Studies and Emily Harwell, a Ph. D. candidate in the School of Forestry and Environmental Sciences. Participants Among the many participants at the conference will be: John Adams, Professor of Geography, University College London, author of Risk (UCL, 1995) and active participant in public debates over the use of cost-benefit analysis in UK transport policy for more than two decades. Franck Amalric, Society for International Development, Rome (tentative). Tariq Banuri, Sustainable Development Institute, Pakistan, Tellus Institute, and Harvard University, thinker, activist and contributor to or editor of many books on economics, development, and the politics of knowledge, including Who Will Save the Forests? (Zed, 1993) and Dominating Knowledge (Oxford, 1990). Jacquelin Burgess, Professor of Geography, University College London, author of ethnographic studies of contingent-valuation surveys as well as of articles on alternatives to cost-benefit analysis, and organizer of seminars for NGOs and policymakers on deliberative processes in environmental decision-making. Mohammed Dore, Professor of Economics, Brock University, co-editor of Global Environmental Economics (1998). Peter Dorman, Evergreen State College, author of Markets and Mortality: Economics, Dangerous Work, and the Value of Human Life (1996) and former consultant for the US Department of Labor. Michael Dove, Professor of Social Ecology, School of Forestry and Environmental Sciences, Yale University, and author of many anthropological and cross-disciplinary works on forests, forest-dwellers, forestry and foresters, including "Theories of Swidden Agriculture and the Political Economy of Ignorance". Aly Ercelawn, CREED, Karachi, Pakistan, NGO activist and thinker on urban and dam issues (tentative). Wendy Nelson Espeland, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Northwestern University and author of The Struggle for Water: Politics, Rationality and Identity in the American Southwest (1998) and articles on commensuration. Majid Ezzati, Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy Program, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University and critic of the use of cost- benefit analysis in the assessment of household-level technology. Stephen Gudeman, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota and author of, among other works, Economics as Culture (Cambridge, 1986) and Conversations in Colombia (Cambridge, 1990). Michael Goldman, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, editor of Privatizing Nature (Pluto, 1998) and sociologist of development knowledge and of the World Bank community. Shalmali Guttal, Focus on the Global South, Bangkok, an NGO which attempts to strengthen grassroots organizations' capacity to tie their experience to analysis of issues such as trade liberalization and development and monetary policy. Kamal Malhotra, United Nations Development Programme, New York (tentative). Aubrey Mayer, Director, Global Commons Institute, London and longtime NGO climate activist credited with raising the profile of the issue of equity at international climate negotiations (tentative). Representative of Narmada Bachao Andolan, Narmada Valley, India. Mary O'Brien, Eugene, Oregon, leading activist on US toxics issues and thinker on risk analysis and its alternatives. Martin O'Connor, Economics Department, University of Versailles, author of many works on cost-benefit analysis and alternatives and participant in debates on environment and economics in the European Union. John O'Neill, Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Lancaster and author of Ecology, Policy and Politics: Human Well-Being and the Natural World (Routledge, 1993) and other books and articles on political theory and philosophy of economics. Kumrab Phanthong, SANTI-DHAMMA, Satun, Thailand, NGO activist, researcher and trainer in the areas of alternative agriculture, forestry and economics. Vijay Paranjpye, ECONET, Pune, NGO activist, economist and author of Evaluating the Tehri Dam and many other works. T. M. Porter, Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles and author of Trust in Numbers (1994). Steve Rayner, Professor of Environment and Public Affairs, Columbia University and co-editor of Human Choice and Climate Change (1998). James C. Scott, Eugene Meyer Professor of Political Science and Anthropology, Yale University and author of Seeing Like a State (1998), Domination and the Arts of Resistance (1990), Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (1985) and The Moral Economy of the Peasant (1976). Peter Soderbaum, Professor of Ecological Economics, Malardalens Hogskola, Vesteras, Sweden and author of many works on environmental economics and alternatives to cost-benefit analysis. Tony Tweedale, Montana Coalition for Health, Environment and Economic Rights. Gopi Upreti, Executive Director, National Academy for Environment, Population and Development, Associate Professor, Tribhuvan University, Nepal. John Wargo, Associate Professor, School of Forestry and Environmental Science, Yale University and author of Our Children's Toxic Legacy: How Science and Law Fail to Protect Us from Pesticides (1996). Robert Weissman, Multinational Monitor, Washingtonl Daphne Wysham, Transnational Institute and Institute for Policy Studies, Washington, and analyst and activist on energy and global warming issues (tentative). Many other scholars and activists from the Yale community and elsewhere are also expected to participate. Logistics Participants should aim to arrive in New Haven on the evening of 7 October if possible. The conference will begin on the morning of Friday 8 October and conclude shortly after midday on Sunday 10 October. The nearest large airports to New Haven are Kennedy and La Guardia airports in New York City and Newark airport in New Jersey, although there is also a smaller New Haven airport served by United Airlines. There are regular buses from various terminals at Kennedy airport to New Haven which cost around $40 and take about two hours in transit. New Haven is also on the main rail line from Boston to New York, and is served by various bus companies. Bus lines terminate at the New Haven train station, which is a short (c. 15-minute) taxi ride from the Yale University campus. A limited number of rooms for participants have been reserved at the Holiday Inn just off the Yale campus at about US$100/night/person. For information on this and other accommodation please contact Emily Harwell at Program in Agrarian Studies, Yale University, 89 Trumbull St., Box 208300, New Haven, CT 06520-8300, tel. +1 203 432 9833, fax +1 203 432 5036, email: emily.harwell@yale.edu. Registration There is no fee for the conference. Deadline for registration is 15 September 1999. The Cost-Benefit Analysis Dilemma: Strategies and Alternatives 7-10 October 1999 New Haven, CT, USA NAME___________________________________________________________ TITLE___________________________________________________________ ORGANIZATION_________________________________________________ STREET ADDRESS________________________________________________ CITY____________________________________________________________ PROVINCE/STATE________________________________________________ COUNTRY_______________________________________________________ POST CODE______________________________________________________ PHONE__________________________________________________________ FAX_____________________________________________________________ EMAIL__________________________________________________________ SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS_________________________________________ COMMENTS, SUGGESTIONS, OBJECTIONS_____________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ Please post or email this form to Emily Harwell or M. Kay Mansfield at: Program in Agrarian Studies, Yale University, 89 Trumbull St., Box 208300, New Haven, CT 06520-8300, tel. +1 203 432 9833, fax +1 203 432 5036, email: emily.harwell@yale.edu or jscott@yale.edu, with a copy to Larry Lohmann at Flat 4, The Pharmacy, Burton St., Marnhull, Dorset DT10 1PP, UK, email: larrylohmann@gn.apc.org. From fbp at igc.apc.org Thu Jul 29 01:46:10 1999 From: fbp at igc.apc.org (John M. Miller) Date: Wed, 28 Jul 1999 12:46:10 -0400 Subject: [asia-apec 1215] URGENT FOR WEB SITE- Action Alert: Call World Bank for East Timor Message-ID: <3.0.5.32.19990728124610.03996010@pop2.igc.apc.org> Contact World Bank by August 2 No New Aid to Indonesia Until a Free & Fair Vote in East Timor and Indonesia's Presidential Election Call or write the World Bank today. Urge the World Bank to withhold the Social Safety Net Adjustment Loan until after East Timor votes for autonomy or independence. Indonesia should not be rewarded for refusing to live up to its commitments. Under the May 5 UN agreement setting up the vote. Indonesia is supposed to stop paramilitary violence in East Timor, and its officials aren't allowed to campaign. Contact (phone or fax are best) James Wolfensohn, President, World Bank 1818 H Street, NW Washington, DC 20433 tel: (202) 458-2907 fax: (202) 522-0355 Send copies to: Jan Piercy, Executive Director for the U.S. to the World Bank 1818 H St. NW, Washington, DC 20433 Tel: 202-458-0110, Fax: 202-477-2967 email: jpiercy@worldbank.org and your congressional Representative and Senators (For a current list of congressional e-mail addresses, office and fax numbers, try http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/ or http://www.congress.org ) Your calls and faxes do make a difference. BACKGROUND The World Bank may soon decide to release $300 million of a planned $600 million Social Safety Net Adjustment Loan (SSNAL) to Indonesia. Indonesia could announce that its met some 10 of 25 required conditions to release the loan as early as Monday, August 2. The World Bank could release the currently suspended money soon after that. According to a coalition of over 400 Indonesian and East Timorese organizations, there is evidence of significant abuses of Social Safety Net Funds in East Timor, "most of which are connected to the pro-integration campaigns and the support of pro-integration militias who are proven actors of terror and intimidation towards the East Timorese population." Releasing these funds now would certainly send the wrong signal to Indonesia. The World Bank must make clear that aid to Indonesia is contingent on a free and fair UN ballot in East Timor and peaceful transition to East Timor's new political status. The Indonesian and East Timorese groups say that without donor commitment to the rights of the East Timorese people, "millions of dollars of SSN funds, its implementors and its donors will be directly linked with the terrible violations of human rights in East Timor." The World Bank placed a hold on $600 million in SSNALs to Indonesia -- after approving them in May -- due to concerns about past abuses of SSNAL funds and fears about their misuse during Indonesia's elections. Indonesia has a history of misusing international funds to influence elections. Indonesian activists requested that the funds be blocked until the establishment of a new government, but the World Bank only agreed to block the funds until the first stage of the June 7 national Indonesian election. The bank listed 25 problems (Complaints) with the SSNAL programs. Indonesia is supposed to fix 10 of them to get half the funds. One of these involved a threat by the Bupati (district head) of Ambeno to withhold poverty aid from villages who failed to attend meetings promoting autonomy for East Timor. Indonesia says they have satisfactorily addressed 10 Complaints and should now get the money. Clearly, they haven't addressed the Complaint pertaining to Ambeno, nor considered many other potential complaints concerning still-occupied East Timor. On July 17, ETAN urged the World Bank and other donors to postpone any aid until after East Timor votes. "Pledging further financial assistance to Indonesia at this time would send an entirely wrong message to Jakarta, which has failed to stop military-supported paramilitary terror in East Timor, despite its commitments under the May 5 UN agreements," said Lynn Fredriksson, ETAN's Washington Representative in a press release. (http://www.etan.org/news/news99b/postpone.htm). In June, ETAN urged the World Bank to continue to withhold Social Safety Net Funds (SSNF) for Indonesia due to evidence that these funds are being misused in East Timor. Leaked local government documents from East Timor show that SSNF were approved to pay civil defense units (CDUs), some of which incorporate paramilitary militias whose violent activities threaten to derail the August vote on the territory's political status. One of the regencies filing these documents was Ambeno, already named in one of the 25 World Bank Complaints. ETAN called for an audit of any bank funds used to date in East Timor. The World Bank has yet to respond to that request, but has since pulled its personnel from East Timor due to concerns about their security. (http://www.etan.org/news/news99b/worldbnk.htm) For more information contact: East Timor Action Network Washington Office 110 Maryland Avenue NE #30 Washington, DC 20002 202-544-6911; 202-544-6118 (fax) etandc@igc.apc.org or John M. Miller Media & Outreach Coordinator, East Timor Action Network PO Box 150753, Brooklyn, NY 11215-0753 USA Phone: (718)596-7668 Fax: (718)222-4097 etan-outreach@igc.apc.org From gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Fri Jul 30 12:09:54 1999 From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Fri, 30 Jul 1999 15:09:54 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1216] NZ: APEC needs financial principles: McKinnon Message-ID: <8im8BF1w165w@corso.ch.planet.gen.nz> Otago Daily Times, Dunedin, New Zealand 21 July 1999 Apec needs financial principles: McKinnon Manila: New Zealand, host of this year's Apec summit in September, will ask leaders of the forum to endorse a set of principles that will govern financial markets, Foreign Affairs Minister Don McKinnon said last week. The Asian financial crisis had shown that while opening up markets was essential for sustained economic growth, it was necessary these be governed effectively, he said. New Zealand hoped the summit would provide a framework to assist Apec member economies with the process of structural reforms, he said. "As the first step, I will be proposing that leaders endorse a set of competition and regulatory principles when we meet in September. "These principles will stress the need for markets to be open, transparent and well governed." Speaking to Filipino and New Zealand business executives in Manila, Mr McKinnon described his proposal as an "economic policy 'toolbox' - a set of policy approaches which economies can use in developing domestic regulatory policy in what is an increasingly globalised economic environment". Thailand's de facto devaluation of the baht currency in July 1997 triggered a tidal wave of currency meltdowns across Asia, exposing basic structural weaknesses in the financial systems masked by years of economic growth. Mr McKinnon said Apec must work collectively to strengthen the financial markets and contribute to efforts by the Group of Seven industrialised countries to institute reforms in the global financial system. "The critical task here is for Apec members to...strengthen domestic financial markets including by improving bank supervision and corporate governance in the region," he said. He also said New Zealand was "committed to building broader support" for Apec within a wider group. Apec groups 21 economies bordering the Pacific Rim, namely Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, the United States and Vietnam. - AFP From amittal at foodfirst.org Sat Jul 31 01:55:45 1999 From: amittal at foodfirst.org (Anuradha Mittal) Date: Fri, 30 Jul 1999 09:55:45 -0700 Subject: [asia-apec 1217] Excellent book on Thai politics/economy Message-ID: A Siamese Tragedy: Development & Disintegration in Modern Thailand By Walden Bello, Shea Cunningham and Li Kheng Poh ) 1998, 267 pages Food First Books and Zed Press ISBN 0-935028-74-9 $19.95 Order a copy at www.foodfirst.org or at 1-800-243-0138 ************************************************************************ R E V I E W Copyright 1999, Inter Press Service DEVELOPMENT-BOOK: Pitfalls of Thailand's Economic Prosperity By Boonthan Sakanond BANGKOK, Feb 16 (IPS) - Throughout the early 1990s, Thai policy makers were convinced Thailand was on the verge of joining Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore as a newly industrialised country. But with the economic and social crises besetting the country not showing any significant signs of abating, policy activist and sociologist Walden Bello warns Thailand may fast be heading into the ranks of the Third World. In a new book 'A Siamese Tragedy: Development and Disintegration in Modern Thailand', Bello bats for a radical shift in Thai development policy to make it more people and community-oriented, reduce deep-rooted income inequalities and tread a path somewhere between the state and market economies. While such a change in direction is unlikely to come from government, the sociologist predicts an outbreak of grassroots movements aimed at forcing the country's elites to put the people's interests before their own or face ouster. A long-time critic of the East Asian model of development, Bello is best known for his classic 1991 book titled `Dragons in Distress' which showed that the ''tiger'' economies of Korea, Taiwan and Singapore had achieved impressive growth rates only on the back of systematic exploitation of labour, the environment and the agricultural sector. Further, despite their flashy image as manufacturing centres of cars and electronic goods, these countries, he argued, had little investments in developing human and technological resources - a factor affecting their future growth. Bello has also been a prominent opponent of World Bank and International Monetary Fund policies in the region which he says have been ideologically inspired by the ''dubious'' US agenda of ''rolling back the state's role in developing economies'' and prying open their markets to US capital. `A Siamese Tragedy', authored by Bello along with researchers Shea Cunningham and Li Kheng Poh, also dwells on what they call a misguided development path for agriculture adopted by Thai policymakers. This, the book claims, impoverished the agricultural sector to pay for industrial development, enriched the elite at the expense of workers and ordinary citizens and finally failed to develop skilled human resources. The first phase of development of the modern Thai economy, according to the book, was of a strip-mine type which emphasised the export of natural resources like wood to raise revenue necessary to finance industrial growth. This began in the late fifties when under World Bank guidance the military-led government of Sarit Thanarat replaced strong government control with private sector initiative as the guiding force in the economy. The second phase, occurring in the mid-80s, was that of export- oriented industrialisation which created an international image of Thailand as the next tiger economy in the region. With growth rates averaging 8.0 percent annually the country indeed was a ''gold rush'' economy and the darling of foreign investors. Bello points out that these high growth rates, while enriching political and business elites, was deeply detrimental to Thailand's long-term interests. The most obvious damage of course was on the environmental front due to lax implementation of controls in a bid to appease foreign investors. The eighties and early nineties were also a time of frenzied construction, the automobile boom and over consumption of consumer goods in urban Bangkok leading to a poisoning of the city's air and water systems. In the countryside, village-folk bore the brunt of a mega dam building spree by state-run electricity generation agencies catering to the growing energy needs of the newly rich urbanites. Over the years, Bangkok-based elites through their tax and industrial policies, Bello says, have also been guilty of deliberately neglecting and indeed impoverishing Thailand's agricultural sector to pay for urban growth and maintain political stability by keeping food prices low. Everytime farmers sought to organize themselves to demand land- reform, better farm prices or assert their democratic rights, they have been brutally crushed by various military juntas under the pretext of suppressing ''communist insurgency''. The marginalisation of this sector is clearly shown by the fact that while agriculture's contribution to GDP fell from 26.9 per cent in 1975 to 10.4 percent in 1995, it still absorbed over 64 percent of the country's workforce in the mid-nineties. A poorer countryside also meant the creation of a vast reservoir of cheap labour that could be tapped by the industrial sector. But labour in the country's burgeoning industries did not fare better than farmers when it came to incomes or quality of life. One of the biggest disservices done by the Thai elite to the long- term interests of the Thai people, Bello says, was their failure to improve skills and develop technological capabilities of their human resources. Despite the presence of a large number of foreign car and electronics companies in Thailand, Bello argues that there had been very little transfer of technology and the country has become a `technological dependency' of Japanese firms. Thailand has also one of the lowest investments in research and development activities in both the state and private sector, another reason why it has not been able to develop skilled manpower in any important industrial sector. Though Bello does touch upon the subject several times in his book, what is missing is a deeper analysis of the political and cultural context in which all these economic policies were being carried out. While Thailand is a relatively more developed democracy than many of its neighbours or other nations in south-east Asia it is still an extremely elite-oriented, authoritarian society especially in its cultural and political spheres. Repeated suppression of democratic movements over the decades has produced a culture of impunity among the elites who consider themelves above all laws. Bello places a lot of faith in the ability of Thailand's vigorous grassroots NGO movements to challenge these elites and pursue their dream of a community-based, ecologically sustainable and equitable society. (END/IPS/ap-dv/ss/ral/99) Anuradha Mittal Policy Director Institute for Food and Development Policy - Food First 398 60th Street, Oakland, CA 94618 USA Phone: (510) 654-4400 Fax: (510) 654-4551 http://www.foodfirst.org From gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz Sat Jul 31 14:02:36 1999 From: gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz (Gatt Watchdog) Date: Sat, 31 Jul 1999 17:02:36 +1200 Subject: [asia-apec 1218] Auckland: Alternatives To The APEC Agenda Message-ID: <2em0BF1w165w@corso.ch.planet.gen.nz> Details of the Alternative to the APEC Agenda conference, Auckland, September 10-12. AOTEAROA/NEW ZEALAND APEC MONITORING GROUP Auckland Office Ground Floor, Methodist Mission Building 370 Queen Street Box 106 233 Auckland Phone (64) 9 302 5390 extn 833 or (64) 9 8463227 Fax (64) 9 846 3297 Mobile 021 217 3039 Email: notoapec@clear.net.nz Christchurch Office Box 1905 Christchurch Phone (64) 3 3662803 Fax (64) 3 3668035 Email: notoapec@clear.net.nz Website: www.apec.gen.nz Alternatives to the APEC Agenda Conference Programme and Registration Details _____________________________________________________________________________ Organised by the Aotearoa/New Zealand APEC Monitoring Group Sponsored by GATT Watchdog, CAFCA, and the New Zealand Trade Union Federation 10-12 September 1999 Auckland Aotearoa/New Zealand The Alternatives to the APEC Agenda Conference will build on a year-long education and action programme opposed to APEC and the global freemarket economic agenda which it is part of. This has included forums, public meetings and other activities in Wellington, Christchurch, Auckland, Rotorua and other centres. Alternatives to the APEC Agenda will have a strong domestic focus on the impact of the free trade and investment, free market model on Aotearoa/New Zealand. It will draw the links between this form of "development", colonisation, and the extreme market reforms which successive governments have implemented. Speakers from around the Asia-Pacific region will discuss the implications of this agenda on their communities, and their peoples' responses. The conference aims to develop concrete strategies to expose and oppose corporate-driven processes like APEC and work on genuine alternatives to a fundamentally flawed globalisation agenda. Alternatives to the APEC Agenda is completely independent of official APEC activities and is not funded or sponsored in any way by any government or political party. *********************************************************************** The APEC Monitoring Group Since the 1994 APEC Summit in Indonesia, the Aotearoa/New Zealand APEC Monitoring Group has been involved with ongoing research, education, media and campaign work on the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, and the implications of its agenda for Aotearoa/New Zealand and other APEC member countries. Members of the Monitoring Group have attended alternative meetings on APEC in Jakarta (1994), Osaka/Kyoto (1995), Manila (1996), Vancouver (1997) and Kuala Lumpur (1998) as well as monitoring the official APEC meetings themselves and their impact on the cities that have hosted the events. The APEC Monitoring Group is a member of the GATT Watchdog coalition and works closely with Corso and the Trade Union Federation. *********************************************************************** PROGRAMME Public Meeting 7.30 pm Friday 10 September 1999 Methodist Mission, 370 Queen St, Auckland Speakers: Dr Jane Kelsey, Professor of Law, Auckland University, Author of "The New Zealand Experiment" Antonio Tujan, Director, IBON Databank, Philippines Moses Havini, Representative, Bougainville Interim Government Annette Sykes, Ngati Pikiao, Treaty of Waitangi activist Conference Where: University of Auckland Conference Centre 26 Symonds St, Auckland When: Saturday 11 and Sunday 12 September 1999 _______________________________________ Saturday 11 September 9am Welcome Session One: Implications of the APEC Agenda 9.30 Opening Speaker: Moana Jackson - Ngati Kahungunu; Director, Nga Kaiwhakamarama I Nga Ture (Maori Legal Service) 10 International Panel Sunera Thobani, Ruth Wynn Woodward Professor of Womens Studies, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada and speakers from Mexico, Japan and Korea 11.15 Local Panel Robert Reid, Trade Union Federation Bill Rosenberg, CAFCA (Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa) researcher Peter Wills, biologist, GE activist Leonie Pihama, Ngati Mahanga/Te Atiawa, Maori educationalist 12.15pm Report back from the APEC Monitoring Group on the forums throughout 1999 1pm Lunch Session Two: Alternatives to the APEC Agenda 1.45pm Keynote speaker: Antonio Tujan, Director, IBON Databank, Philippines 2.15 Panel Discussion Prue Hyman, Associate Professor of Economics, Victoria University, Wellington Jane Kelsey, Professor of Law, Auckland University, Author of "The New Zealand Experiment" Rex Varona, Executive Director, Asian Migrant Centre, Hong Kong Annette Sykes, Ngati Pikiao, Treaty activist 3.45 Thematic Workshops 5.30 Report back 7pm Film: The Sixth Sun: Mayan Uprising in Chiapas (1996) by Saul Landau (Drinks and Nibbles will be available) Sunday 12th September Session Three: Strategies for the Future 9.30am Keynote Speaker: Moses Havini, Bougainville Interim Government 10 Panel discussion Mereana Pitman, Ngati Kahungunu, Treaty educator Aziz Choudry, GATT Watchdog Radha D'Souza, Asia Pacific Workers Solidarity Links Crispin Beltran, unionist, chairman of KMU, Philippines 11.30 Thematic Workshops 1pm Lunch 1.45 Report Back 3.30 End 4.30pm Rally (venue and details to be arranged) ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ REGISTRATION FORM: (Please note: Due to venue restraints we have limited the number of overseas registrations to 40 places and local participants to 140. Priority will be given to ensure a broad representation of sectors and community interests.) Name...................................................................... Organisation.............................................................. Brief description of organisation..................... .......................................................................... ......................................................................... Address.................................................................. ......................................................................... Phone................................................................... Email.................................................................. Please register me for the ( ) Alternatives to the APEC Agenda Conference 11/12 September 1999 I enclose a registration fee of ( ) $50.00 waged ( ) $25.00 low waged ( ) $15.00 unwaged ( ) $ .......Donation ( ) High waged people or organisations suggested fee $75.00 ( ) I plan to attend the film showing and social ( ) Accommodation. We ask that participants try and find their own accommodation. If you need help in this please tick here. Please make cheques payable to: Aotearoa/New Zealand Monitoring Group Please send your registration form to APEC Monitoring Group, Box 106 233, Auckland, by 20 August 1999 Enquiries to: notoapec@clear.net.nz