Reuters:
Fri Nov 18, 2005 11:10 PM ET
By Lee Suwan and Martin Nesirky
PUSAN, South Korea (Reuters) - Leaders of the Pacific Rim reconvened in the South Korean city of Pusan on Saturday to discuss joint cooperation against threats to their economies from terrorism, bird flu and an impasse in world trade talks.
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum's 21 leaders arrived at a seafront retreat in luxury sedans where they were greeted by host South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun.
APEC's membership, which includes the United States, Japan, China and Russia, accounts for 46 percent of the world's commerce and nearly 60 percent of its gross domestic product, and yet the group is sometimes dismissed as a talking-shop with no clout.
On Friday, however, the group showed it was determined to make its voice heard, adopting a tough statement calling for an end to an apparent impasse over world trade talks when the World Trade Organization meets in Hong Kong in December.
The statement, the final draft of which was obtained by Reuters before its release on Saturday, does not name the European Union but makes an implicit reference by calling for greater access for farm goods.
But some APEC members were blunt. "The leaders here ... are basically saying that now the ball is in Europe's court," South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon said.
The leaders -- including U.S. President George W. Bush and China's Hu Jintao -- will talk for about two hours before their traditional group photograph in local costume, in this case a long Korean durumagi coat.
Turning from trade, they were expected to focus their discussions on Saturday on other issues affecting their economies like counterfeiting and piracy, oil prices, the effect of natural disasters and the threat of bird flu becoming a pandemic.
Australia and Japan were expected to unveil new measures to combat the H5N1 bird flu virus, which currently affects mostly birds but which experts believe is steadily mutating into a form that could be transmitted from human to human.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard said he planned to announce a "very significant initiative".
The streets around the venue -- tucked away safely on an islet around the corner from Pusan's biggest tourist draw, Haeundae beach -- were quiet under a heavy security cordon.
Some 30,000 police officers were on duty in the city of 3.7 million people, Secret Service agents were on alert at Bush's hotel and a three-tiered naval cordon guarded the seas around the retreat.
Some 3,000 farmers and farm activists were expected to try to reach the summit venue from a nearby subway station but were likely to have the same reception as on Friday, when protesters were stopped by thousands of riot police in a violent clash.
Bush, who has been dogged by domestic criticism over the Iraq war during his four-country tour of Asia, met Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono before the summit meeting.
Yudhoyono's success with Indonesia's crackdown on terrorism has been praised especially after last week's killing of militant Azahari bin Husin, the suspected brains behind several bomb attacks in Indonesia blamed on Jemaah Islamiah.
Although the leaders were meeting in Pusan, Roh's home town and the only city not to fall to North Korea during the 1950-53 Korean War, there was no detailed discussion of Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programs nor of continuing multilateral talks aimed at having them scrapped in return for aid and recognition.
"The six-party talks are not an APEC issue," said Wang Xiaolong, an APEC senior official from China. "But host South Korea is concerned about this, and the chairman, President Roh, is likely to express his views on this."
South Korean officials said this was likely to be an oral statement at the end of the talks.
