Clinton Assures Pacific Rim That Trade Expansion Efforts Will Continue

In what amounted to a farewell address to a summit of Pacific Rim nations, President Clinton on Wednesday assured leaders of the region that the United States will press ahead with efforts to expand and liberalize trade in the years ahead no matter who becomes president.

“On the question of leadership for trade, I think the world can rest easy because both [candidates Vice President Al Gore and Texas Gov. George W. Bush] make strong commitments to do that,” Clinton told the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, a group known as APEC.

The president also underscored Washington’s broader commitment to Asia’s political and economic stability, saying that his administration’s effort to reduce tensions in the Taiwan Strait and the Korean peninsula and encourage China’s “historic choice to open its economy to the world” had anchored the United States permanently to Asia.

“There is no longer any doubt that our link to this region is permanent, not passing,” he said.

In addition to the summit itself, Clinton met separately with Russian President Vladimir V. Putin and South Korean President Kim Dae Jung. He was scheduled to meet later today with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori and Chinese President Jiang Zemin before leaving this evening for Vietnam.

While Clinton pulled out an array of statistics during his 25-minute speech to stress the benefits that open trade and investment have brought to the region in the past decade, his farewell appearance at the APEC summit was in many ways a bittersweet moment.

For a leader who has made liberalized trade a central theme of his presidency, a backlash against globalization that began a year ago on the streets of Seattle in protest of a World Trade Organization meeting there remained evident in Brunei.

And APEC, whose gatherings Clinton had lifted from an obscure informal dialogue among Pacific Basin economies to a high-profile summit meeting, has degenerated into a divided, ill-focused group. As the new century dawns, the organization is preoccupied with its relevance and uncertain how to move toward goals so grandly stated six years ago: free and open trade between its developed economies by 2010 and between all its economies by 2020.

In light of differences at a preparatory meeting among member foreign and trade ministers earlier this week, it appeared unlikely that APEC’s leaders will be able to agree on what many considered to be the most basic step forward--endorsement for the launch of a new global trade round next year.

Malaysia’s fiery minister of trade and industry, Rafidah Abdul Aziz, called the move premature, insisting that first an agenda for such a round must be worked out.

“If there is no agenda, we cannot talk about launching the next round of talks,” she said. Her stance, reportedly shared by other APEC developing economies, was widely seen as a delaying tactic. Observers said it reflected a growing disenchantment among the world’s poorer nations that a more globalized economy has only widened the disparity between the world’s rich and poor nations.

With progress toward broad regional agreement slowed, a flurry of bilateral trade talks is now underway among Pacific Rim nations. Singapore, for example, announced plans Wednesday to begin free-trade negotiations with Australia immediately. It completed and signed a similar accord with New Zealand on Tuesday and is in discussions with Canada, Mexico and Japan to complete similar pacts.

“The current retreat into such agreements would appear to express a certain exasperation with regional accords,” said Timothy Ong, chairman of APEC’s Business Advisory Council, a group of private-sector executives that meets along with the political summit.

Prospects for any quick turnaround in APEC’s fortunes would appear to be bleak, mainly because of a dearth of leadership within the group. Indeed, as they descended on this tiny nation, which shares the island of Borneo with Malaysia and Indonesia, APEC’s leaders represented a kind of political walking wounded.

Among those who gathered here Wednesday, two were lame ducks (Clinton and Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo), another (Philippine President Joseph Estrada) had just been impeached, and several others, including Japan’s Mori, Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid and Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian, were fighting for their political lives. Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, campaigning for reelection, didn’t even show up.

Despite these difficulties, the United States floated two initiatives, including an anti-piracy software initiative with implications for America’s entertainment industry. Gene Sperling, director of Clinton’s National Economic Council, told reporters that the goal is to get a commitment from APEC governments to use only non-pirated software. In APEC countries, 50% to 90% of software is pirated, he said.

In a separate move, the U.S. and four other APEC nations--Brunei, Singapore, New Zealand and Chile--also joined in what Clinton called the world’s first multilateral “open skies” agreement, an accord that lifts restrictions on air passenger and cargo travel. Clinton invited other member states to join the initiative, viewed as an essential step in the efficient delivery of goods bought on the Internet.

After Clinton’s talks with South Korea’s Kim, American officials said a new U.S.-North Korean dialogue had been a major undercurrent in Clinton’s talks in Brunei.

“It’s a subject of much interest and discussion among everyone here,” said Wendy Sherman, an advisor to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and special envoy in dealing with North Korea.

“Everyone has seen the value of engagement with the North,” she said. “We’re not the only country pursuing an improved relationship.”

During their 45-minute session, Kim told Clinton that he believes in engagement with the North and that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is the sole decision-maker in the North, a U.S. official said, implying that the South Korean leader endorsed the possibility of a Clinton trip to the North before the U.S. president leaves office in two months.

Sherman said Clinton expects to make a decision in the “near future.”