KEY POINTS:
The Apec summit in Hanoi will have no effect on what is happening in the stalled Doha Round of talks at the World Trade Organisation, says a former top insider for New Zealand's trade negotiations, Tim Groser.
Mr Groser, now a National MP, believes the real value of an Apec summit has shifted from its economic roots in trade liberalisation to being one of the most important political forums on the global calendar.
"Apec cuts through the crap and allows interaction between heads of Government on a very personal level and that is enormously valuable."
Much store has been put on the Apec leaders' summit in the Vietnamese capital that begins tomorrow to help get the Doha Round back on track.
Mr Groser is not optimistic. He said an even more powerful grouping than the 21 Apec economies, the G8, issued a statement on July 18 renewing its commitment to the Doha Round.
"The effect was underwhelming. Two weeks later the talks were shunted into a railway siding and suspended by WTO director-general Pascal Lamy."
He expected the Apec leaders would issue a declaration that would have "zero positive effect".
"The value of these communiques is like dental hygiene - they are something you should do but it ain't life-enhancing."
But he also said it was essential they issue it, or it would have a negative effect.
"There is political asymmetry at work here if the President and the great and the good met in Vietnam and did not do exactly that. The world would correctly draw the unmistakeable conclusion that completion of the talks - whenever that may happen - had now been quietly dropped.
"Consider it like the Speaker's prayer we say every day in Parliament. It is aspirational and I always say, 'Amen'."
Mr Groser said he would like to be proved wrong but he believed completion of the round would be years away, not months.
Apec's Bogor goals - free trade by developed countries by 2010 and developing countries by 2020 - were "dreaming in Technicolor".
"But there is not a single tariff line of the big guys that ever got liberalised because of Apec. Nothing in the United States, nothing in Japan."
Apec should not be seen as just economic. "It is political, deeply political, and very useful precisely because it is informal."
As Apec has lost its economic force in terms of its mechanics, it has evolved into a valuable political force, said Mr Groser.
That was possible only because it had begun on the basis of economic co-operation. If it had been given a political title, it would never have been established.
"It's not dead but it has run out of steam; it has been replaced by a greater political community."
Crucial to this was who attended the Heads of Government meeting, which includes the leaders of Russia, China and the United States.
The day that the United States President stopped coming to Apec would be the day it lost its political force.
Mr Groser cited three big examples: the beginning of the thaw in US-New Zealand relations; providing a focus for pressure on Indonesia to allow international intervention in East Timor in 1999; and the opportunity it gave to China and the US to resume talks six months after the US bombed China's Belgrade embassy in 1999.
The origin of the US thaw towards nuclear-free New Zealand was the Apec summit in 1993 at which Prime Minister Jim Bolger bowled up to then US President Bill Clinton, thrust out his hand and introduced himself.
That sole act forced the President to abandon the ban on high-level diplomatic contact.
Other side of the fence
Backbench National MP Tim Groser was formerly at the top of his game in trade negotiations until he quit last year for politics, to cries of "betrayal" from his political master at the time, Trade Negotiations Minister Jim Sutton.
He had been New Zealand's ambassador to the World Trade Organisation in Geneva and chaired Agricultural negotiations for the WTO in the contentious Doha round of talks. Why did he give up that glittering career? Mr Groser says the initiative on international issues passed from officials to ministers and that was not set to change.
"So I had to become a minister instead of spending the rest of my life risking potty-training new ministers - I could not assume that my unbelievable run of luck with my simply excellent ministers would continue.
"In career terms, a 'one step back with the hope of two steps forward' strategy."'
