US plays down APEC climate change role

US plays down APEC climate change role

Anne Davies Herald Correspondent in Washington
August 1, 2007

AUSTRALIA will struggle to get firm commitments from the US on climate change targets at the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum in Sydney next month because the US sees it only as "a step along the way".
Instead, the US regards a UN meeting in Bali in December as the forum to finalise its response to global warming.
In an interview with the Herald, the US ambassador to APEC, Patricia Haslach, said: "We would view this as a continuation of what President Bush announced at the [Group of Eight summit in June], and the next step in the process."
At that summit, in Germany, George Bush outlined a vision for each country to spell out goals for greenhouse gas reductions, but specifically ruled out the European approach for firm caps to be imposed on developing nations.
The idea that the Sydney meeting will yield firm targets, or even a commitment to work on a regional carbon trading scheme seems fanciful.
The US is likely to put its main diplomatic energies at APEC into advancing a regional free trade area, a long-term goal that will sit beside its continued efforts to breath life into the multilateral Doha trade round.
Ms Haslach stressed that the concept of a regional free trade area, first floated at the Hanoi meeting of APEC last year, was not a substitute for Doha, and the US would be seeking another strong statement from the 21 APEC nations in support of the Doha round.
"Doha [is] still the priority. APEC is only 21 countries, but it is 50 per cent of world trade and 60 per cent of the world's GDP."
The free trade area could involve APEC countries agreeing as a first step to "map" all of their bilateral free trade agreements. They would then try to formulate measures to be included in future agreements on issues such as tariff reductions.
"So many of the countries in APEC have agreements with each other, for example the US just signed an agreement with Korea, and we have one pending with Peru," Ms Haslach said. "What we are hoping to do is look at all the free trade agreements that all the member economies have with each other, and that will be first step as we head toward a free trade area."
Ms Haslach said it was possible the free trade area project might begin as a pilot with just some APEC member countries.
The US will also push for a two-year extension of the moratorium on new members at APEC. This means India, which recently walked away from the Doha talks, and another 12 countries seeking membership, will almost certainly be barred from joining APEC until 2010.
The US position was to "deepen" reforms before adding new economies, Ms Haslach said.
The US supports Australia's plans to overhaul APEC and give it more resources, and its agenda of structural reform "behind the borders" such as legal and regulatory reform in APEC nations.
The US will also pursue further measures on intellectual property and piracy, but Ms Haslach acknowledged that there had been significant advances in this area, particularly by China.