KEY POINTS:
Prime Minister Helen Clark began her Apec summit in Hanoi yesterday largely distracted from international trade and security matters as another Pacific crisis emerged on her doorstep, instability in Tonga.
But she indicated last night that she will follow through on her plans to take a leadership role on the climate change issue.
"An organisation like Apec which was founded to look at growth and development cannot ignore something as pressing as this," she told reporters.
"I certainly intend to be raising the economic effects of climate change."
The recent Stern report in Britain had said the economic consequences could be as dire as the effects of the last two world wars.
"So I believe it has to come on to this agenda."
Australian Prime Minister John Howard also plans to make it a significant Apec issue for the first time.
Helen Clark welcomed that but said every other country that had ratified the Kyoto Protocol still wanted Australia and the US to as well. But the more important issue was that Australia was doing something about it, in its Asia Pacific Partnership on climate change - which promotes the development of new technologies to reduce carbon emissions.
The other key issue for her would be the suspended Doha round of World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiations.
She arrived in Hanoi from a trip to Britain and Europe which included, according to Foreign Affairs officials, an unprecedented string of high-level meetings with the leaders of Britain, Germany, Italy and France.
She said yesterday the timing of the French presidential elections in April next year had not been seriously enough factored into possible forward offers by Europe, implying that there should be greater pessimism over movement from Europe.
That may be a topic of conversaiton for her when she shares a lunch table with President Bush, who arrived in Hanoi yesterday.
Despite the Republicans' "thumping" at the hands of the Democrats in mid-term elections, and questions over his potency in getting trade deals through Congress, Mr Bush is set do some thumping of his own on trade and North Korea.
He stopped in Singapore on the way where he gave a speech pushing for the resumption of the Doha round of WTO negotiaitons and called for support for a Free Trade Agreement of the Asia Pacific area.
The big disappointment for Mr Bush and his Vietnamese hosts is that Congress denied him last week urgent legislation to normalise trading relations with Vietnam, though he is expected to get a simple majority when it is submitted without urgency.
Helen Clark has confirmed bilateral meetings with the leaders of Vietnam, Canada, the Philippines, and Malaysia.
The main players
