KEY POINTS:
Australia instigated Apec, the forum that brings together East Asia and the rest of the Pacific rim, a geographic connection that includes three of the world's four largest economies and three of its most powerful states. Yet the summit Australia will host over the next several days seems, even by Apec's modest standards, unusually spiritless.
We are given to hope for nothing except discussions on today's pressing problems: planetary climate change, stalled world trade negotiations, financial uncertainties, religious terrorism, and probably not even discussions on the small matter of Apec's primary purpose: the removal of all remaining tariffs by 2010 in industrialised members and 2020 for the rest.
In Sydney this week the leaders of the United States, China, Japan, Russia, Canada, South Korea, Australia and many smaller or poorer states have an opportunity they should not waste. Heads of government, when they get together, can give crucial impetus and direction to projects that are making no progress at lower levels of diplomacy.
Climate change, for example, could benefit from more ambitious Apec attention. The organisation includes representatives of all three strains of the divergent international response: Kyoto Protocol signatories such as Japan, Canada and New Zealand; the non-signatories pursuing an alternative agreement, the United States and Australia; and the developing countries, notably China, yet to be brought into a greenhouse emissions reduction scheme.
International leadership on climate change remains moribund. Business in modern economies long ago accepted the likelihood that carbon dioxide emissions will carry a discouraging price and they would dearly like to know the price as soon as possible so that their products and processes can be adapted. But governments individually and collectively are still dickering with studies into possible emissions trading markets that could set an efficient price.
New Zealand tried at the last Apec summit to put climate change on the agenda for Sydney. Helen Clark proposed that it tackle the need to reconcile environmental protection with economic growth. But Apec evidently is content to leave the initiative to the G8 and five leading developing countries, and offer no more than a nod to the next United Nations' conference on the subject in Bali in December.
With Japan, the United States and China powerfully represented in Sydney this week, and India, another fast-growing potential economic giant, applying to join Apec, the organisation could make more of this opportunity. India's application is said to be doomed. Its inclusion would extend Apec beyond the Pacific shores and open the way to a much larger and even more unwieldy membership.
But it is a tribute to Apec's standing that India wants to join. It is too easy to scoff at the ineffectuality of international forums such as Apec and the minuscule progress made towards their stated purpose. Busy leaders see merit in them. The US President, who made an unheralded visit to Iraq en route, seldom visits our part of the world for any other purpose. And protesters, of course, can be guaranteed to give the event an aura of importance.
President Bush may be the prime target of a march to be held on Saturday, but the whole Apec gathering has been secured against violent attempts to disrupt it. It may be unclear, as usual, whether the demonstrations want to disown Apec or demand it be more effective. But either way, they think it is important and, on that point at least, they are right.
