the best Teacher is the Taftest competitor

APEC leaders wrap up summit
Sat Nov 19, 2005 12:01 AM ET
By Lee Suwan and John Chalmers

PUSAN, South Korea (Reuters) - Leaders of the Pacific Rim vowed on Saturday to join forces to fight threats to their economies from a possible bird flu pandemic, high oil prices and an impasse in world trade talks.

The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum's 21 leaders spent the morning at a seafront retreat discussing a declaration that set out their priorities for the next year.

Highest on their agenda was a call for trade giants to make progress when they meet in Hong Kong in December -- so high that the leaders issued the call in a separate strongly worded statement aimed at other members of the World Trade Organization.

The leaders also promised to work together to fight the spread of bird flu, setting out a few specific plans including one to stage a "desk-top" simulation drill in early 2006 to test regional responses and communication in the even of a pandemic.

A lethal strain of the H5N1 virus has killed 67 of the 130 people it has infected in Asia since late 2003, but the real fear is that it will mutate and acquire the ability to pass from human to human, causing a global pandemic.

"We agreed on collective, practical measures, including ... testing pandemic preparedness, beginning with a desk-top simulation exercise in early 2006 to test regional responses and communication networks," the final declaration released on Saturday said.

The leaders expressed concern about the impact of high oil prices and vowed to implement measures to help the situation, including conservation and diversification of energy sources.

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.

In meetings all this week the group showed it was determined to make its voice heard to try to break the impasse on global trade, however, and time and again singled out the European Union as the trading partner that had to act.

"The leaders here ... are basically saying that now the ball is in Europe's court," South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon said on Friday.

The statement itself did not name the European Union but made an implicit reference by urging greater access for farm goods.

The leaders -- including U.S. President George W. Bush and China's Hu Jintao -- talked for about two hours before lunch and before their traditional group photograph in local costume, in this case a long Korean durumagi coat.

QUIET UNDER HEAVY SECURITY

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, 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 stopped from reaching the summit venue from a nearby subway station.

On Friday a similar protest turned violent when protesters were stopped by riot police.

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.

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.

South Korea's presidential Blue House said leaders pledged to continue working to share intelligence on terrorism, cut off the flow of funds and to stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

There was no detailed discussion of North Korea's nuclear weapons programs nor of continuing multilateral talks aimed at having them scrapped in return for aid and recognition.

South Korean officials said this was likely to be an oral statement at the end of the talks.