KEY POINTS:
For all the behind-doors meetings and compromise declarations, there was one overriding agreement from the eight days of bargaining by officials, ministers and leaders of the 21 members of the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation forum in Sydney last week.
Economic growth is the key to peace and stability in this part of the world, the leaders declared at the end of their summit. That means everyone should have a fair and equitable slice of available resources, without burying the world in its own filth, and with access to each others' markets.
What was not said, but clearly understood, is that these resources are finite. Behind the ambitions of eventual agreement on effective climate change measures and free trade is the reality that no one is prepared to risk another's progress at their own expense.
And competition for markets and resources is inevitably driving new power plays, placing some of the most powerful nations on the Earth along volatile fault lines. As much as anything else, advocates of Apec make much of the role of the forum in regularly assembling Pacific rim leaders on a first-name basis to help bridge fractious divides.
Thus Australian Prime Minister John Howard was at pains to dispel opinion that his nation's security alliance with the United States and Japan is regarded with suspicion by China as the foundations of a new containment.
"I'm not concerned about China's reaction to the trilateral talks," he said. "I'm still looking for it. I think China understands what I have said - that this is a natural partnership of three great Pacific democracies ... It is not anti-Chinese. I don't find any concern on the part of China. I've had innumerable talks with [Chinese President Hu Jintao] and it is nothing that troubles him in any way. Nor should it."
But the Sydney summit was nonetheless swirling with side-plays of great significance in the mass of one-on-one talks between leaders. This was a central aim of former Australian Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating when he devised the leaders' meeting, and a key reason why they will leave urgent business at home and fly a hemisphere to be there.
At the heart of all debate are the resources needed to power and expand economies.
"As economic globalisation deepens, imbalances in the world economy have affected the rational allocation of global resources and aggravated the structural tensions in the world economy, thus posing the biggest potential danger to the sustained and stable growth of the world economy," President Hu told the Apec business summit. "We should take this issue seriously."
Competition for resources leads to competition for influence. At Apec there was no doubt that this region is in the midst of titanic power plays that stretch the talents of its diplomats.
Australia has so far managed to achieve Howard's aim of maintaining its alliance with the US and Japan without alienating China, against the earlier predictions of his critics. In meetings around Apec last week, he increased military ties with Washington and deepened security dialogue with Japan, while launching new security talks and trade pacts with Beijing.
Canberra's nightmare is being forced to choose between them if diplomacy fails at some point in the future and the US and China went chest-to-chest over Taiwan or some other flashpoint. In view of the ramparts of Fort Dennison - a 19th century defence against a feared Czarist invasion - Howard also welcomed a new player muscling in on his patch: Russian President Vladimir Putin, who signed a A$1 billion ($1.2 billion)-a-year uranium deal (against the wishes of most Australians) to power as many as 30 new nuclear power plants planned by Moscow.
But on the way, and much to the consternation of local security analysts, Putin stopped off in Indonesia to sell two Kilo class submarines, military aircraft and tanks.
"Thank God [Indonesia] is under no sanctions," Putin said in Sydney. "Therefore purchase and selling of weapons on international markets cannot be restricted through co-operation between Indonesia and Russia in this area.
"These are legal and open transactions and they lead to no negative consequences in the world. They do not somehow disturb any balance."
As with Australia, Russia also wanted access to Indonesian resources and concluded trade and investment agreements. Indonesia, which continued security talks with Putin in Sydney, has gained access to a new and powerful door.
Russia has added the nation of Malaysia on an emerging list of Islamic friends in Asia - both of which straddle the Strait of Malacca, the vital and fragile waterway that carries much of the vital resources and trade for North Asia, Australia and New Zealand.
The addition of Russia to China in the western Pacific has jolted the US, which had been so distracted by Iraq that Bush was forced to downplay Chinese influence and the suggestion that Apec was a "China summit".
"I think there was a period earlier when the US was understandably completely preoccupied with what was happening in the Middle East," Prime Minister Helen Clark said.
"But my impression would be that they are very much focused on the Asia relationships again." In Sydney, Bush emphasised Washington's alliances with Australia, Japan, South Korea, Thailand and the Philippines, and relationships with Singapore, Taiwan and Indonesia: "America's commitment to the Asia Pacific region was forged in war and sealed in peace."
But the prospect of a resurgent Pacific Russia is disturbing to the US. Putin's aggressively nationalistic leadership has already rammed against Washington's plans to establish missile defence bases in eastern Europe - a central issue in talks between Bush and Putin in Sydney - and Moscow has made it clear that it is now staking out territory in Asia.
Russia has also significantly improved its relations with China, whose potent ambitions in the region were underlined by the lead role Beijing took in climate change and trade. China's weight ensured that developing nations would continue to have their development concerns built into any future agreement, and that this agreement must be negotiated through the United Nations.
China is urgently trying to make new friends in Asia, and generally succeeding. The region is well aware of where economic power is shifting and of the increasing reach and might of Beijing's military.
All have been relieved that China's former belligerency in the South China Sea has, for the moment at least, moderated and become more amenable to negotiation.
In Sydney Bush and Hu held their own talks, but declined to discuss details. Subjects covered included Iran, Washington's large and contentious trade deficit with Beijing - and the potential to lower it through the floating of the yuan - religious freedom, and China's recent problems with food and consumer product safety.
While Bush told reporters the talks had been held in a "friendly atmosphere", his desire to offset Beijing's rising influence was reflected in proposals for a new Asia-Pacific Democracy Partnership which, by definition, would exclude communist China. At a lunch with regional leaders, Bush was pains to underline the significance of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations - although critical of Myanmar and the continued detention of Opposition Leader Aung San Sui Kyi - and invited them to his ranch in Texas. Bush also said he intended to appoint a special ambassador to south-east Asia.
Leaders and ministers also were keen to discuss tensions in Iran and developments in North Korea, which has agreed to dismantle its nuclear facilities that could help defuse a constant slow-burning fuse in the region. A key aim of Foreign Minister Winston Peters was to quiz his Russian and Chinese counterparts on their perspectives as major players.
Significantly, during their talks South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun and Hu agreed to open negotiations for a peace treaty for the Korean peninsula once tensions sufficiently cooled. Roh also pushed Bush at a media conference after their discussions to finally declare a formal end to the Korean War, still not officially over after more than half a century.
