Scenesetter for the Upcoming APEC meetings in Los Cabos, Mexico

Real Audio of Briefing

       MODERATOR: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Foreign Press Center. I am delighted to see all of you here this afternoon, and want to extend an especially warm welcome to the Jefferson Fellows organized here in Washington on a trip by the East West Center.

       As you know, an important meeting is coming up down in Mexico. It's the annual APEC meeting. And here today I am delighted that we have with us to brief us on this subject Ambassador Lawrence Greenwood. Ambassador Greenwood has extensive experience in the region, having served in several countries -- in fact, even studied in East Asia. And he will have a brief opening statement for us today. And then after that we will be delighted to take your questions. Ambassador Greenwood, please.

       AMB. GREENWOOD: Thanks, Paul. Good afternoon. This year Mexico has indicated that implementation and action will be the main thrust and the main themes for APEC. And so we have been working very closely with Mexico to make APEC a much more action-oriented, results- oriented type of organization. And so I wanted to talk a little bit about the kinds of things that we are doing in that regard in two areas: one, expansion of trade and investment and getting growth going again in the region; and also on the work that we are doing on counterterrorism.

       Let me start with the economic part of that agenda, and start a little bit with looking back over the past year about some of the accomplishments that APEC has achieved. The APEC ministers and leaders when they met in Shanghai spent a lot of time talking about how to best launch the new trade round. And as you all know, several weeks afterwards in fact the new trade round was launched in Doha. Ambassador Zoellick has pointed often to the fact that that meeting had an important role, a contribution to have in the launching of the round by building the consensus for that launch.

       We also have been active in pushing for such areas as experience of the open skies agreement in APEC -- the APEC multilateral open skies agreement. We have an additional country, economy, signed onto the open skies agreement this last year, Peru. And so we are happy with that accomplishment.

       We have been working in areas such as the chemical dialogue and the agricultural policy dialogue to push for harmonization of standards. In the area of chemicals there has been an agreement, a consensus reached, on harmonization that is going to result in significant -- hundreds of millions of dollars of savings for the chemical industry. We are very pleased with that outcome.

       We had the first session of the agricultural biotechnology dialogue earlier this year, in which we were talking about coming up with common approaches for the safe and science-based introduction of bio-engineered foods in the region, and that was also a great success. And so we I think have made a lot of progress in this past year, and got a lot of things done. That's just a few of the things that we have done.

       Let me talk a little bit about what we are now looking to do in Los Cabos when the ministers and leaders come in the next week and a half. On the trade side, we again are going to be working on the WTO, finding ways of pushing the consensus, pushing the negotiating process, so that we can complete by the deadline of January 1, 2005, and coming -- see if we can find some common ground in which we will -- that we will be able to state when we meet in Los Cabos. And we are making I think good progress towards that. We expect a very strong statement with regard to pushing the WTO negotiations forward.

       On trade and investment in the region, we are working hard to implement, to follow up on the pledges the leaders made in the so- called Shanghai accord. And the Shanghai accord was a document that was issued by leaders last year in Shanghai at the leaders meeting. It contains -- it really lays out a new approach to how we do our work in APEC. It's much more implementation-focused, rather than focusing on nonbinding menus and principles. It talks about implementation of those principle and getting actions done on the ground. It also talks about expanding the vision of APEC to include some of the new economy areas that we have been working on in the last few years. It also refers specifically to three areas in which we are seeking agreements this year, and they are: transparency -- implementing transparency principles; two, the implementing trade policies for the new economy -- essentially a package of trade -- liberalization of goods and services that relate to e-business; and, three, trade facilitation to come up with a framework for proceeding with such trade facilitation actions as streamlining of customs, e-government, improving port logistics -- things to bring down the cost of trade transactions, so that we can achieve the target that was set by leaders last year of five percent between now and the year 2006.

       So we've been working on all those areas -- WTO and also those three agreements -- transparency, digital economy and trade facilitation, and hope to have important, significant outcomes when we meet in the next week and a half.

       Another area that's important for growth in the region is the development and the use of new technologies. And this year we have been working on, as I mentioned, agricultural biotechnology, and we'll continue to push on that. We will have our second meeting of a dialogue next February. We have been following up on our information technology agenda in APEC -- and I'll go into this in more detail if you have interest in that.

       Last year in Shanghai we announced the APEC strategy, which is a series of steps and measures to propel the APEC region into a new economy, to have higher productivity, faster growth, through the use -- creating an environment in which we can use information technology to do that.

       And then, finally, we have a new initiative that we are working on this year called the Life Science Forum. This is a forum that would be including business, government and experts to talk about the development of how to create an environment in which we can see more research, development and production of pharmaceuticals, the drugs, vaccines, and diagnostics for the region. It's aimed both at the development of this industry in the Asian region, where there is a great deal of interest in life science industries -- as well as at addressing the health issues and sort of developing drugs, vaccines and diagnostics that can be used to address the infectious diseases that are in the region.

       That's on the economic side.

       On the counterterrorism side, which I also don't want to make it sound like there's a difference between economics and counterterrorism, because our counterterrorism in APEC is very much economically focused. It's about how we can address the challenge that the attacks last year, the attacks we have just seen in Bali -- the challenge that they pose for continued economic prosperity in the region.

       We have been quite successful and moved forward in the last year in APEC in the area of strengthening cooperation on counterterrorism.

       As you all know, the leaders issued a very strong statement last year at the APEC meeting in Shanghai, pledging enhanced cooperation in APEC. And since that time we have worked on a number of areas -- in the area of transportation security and safety, in the area of halting financial transactions and disrupting terrorist financing, in the areas of Customs cooperation, immigration cooperation, to make sure that the flow of goods and people are more secure as we make them also more efficient.

       And we are seeking now some new commitments from the leaders that would move us beyond the kinds of things we have been talking about thus far. It will be very specific commitments with very specific deadlines, and we are still working those out, so I can't get into what those specifics are. But we are looking forward to a very ambitious and robust statement from the leaders on counterterrorism.

       Let me stop there and take your questions.

       MODERATOR: Let me remind you to please use the microphone, and also to introduce yourself and your news organization. Obviously Ambassador Greenwood has explained everything. Yes, please?

       Q Yes, Nadia Tsao with the Liberty Times. According to what -- we know that President Bush has been seeking the support from other leaders on anti-terrorism, especially on the potential attack on Iraq. I am not sure if he will raise that question too in the APEC summit meeting. Could you explain that? Thanks.

       AMB. GREENWOOD: APEC is about -- APEC obviously deals with economic issues in the Asia-Pacific region. And while the -- obviously the threat of Saddam Hussein is a threat that is indeed global in nature, so it does not have some relevance, Iraq is not on the agenda anywhere in any of the APEC meetings that we have set up.

       Having said that, it would be no surprise to me if both the president and Secretary Powell while they were in Los Cabos did raise this issue in various discussions they are going to have in and outside of meeting rooms.

       Q Nake Chinn (ph) with Broadcasting Corporation of China. Ambassador Greenwood, one of the issues that Taiwan's delegation would like to discuss during the APEC meeting is the free trade agreement between Taiwan and the United States. I would like to know your position on that issue. Thank you very much.

       AMB. GREENWOOD: While free trade arrangements will be discussed in a general way at the APEC meetings, perhaps both at the ministerial level and at the leader level, I am not aware that there will be any specific discussions of any -- there will be discussions of any specific free trade arrangements between any of the economies.

       In terms of that particular one and the United States is looking at a number of possibilities -- but that is not one of the ones that we are looking at right now. And so we are -- we hope that there will be something more we can say in about a week on FTAs in general, but not on that particular one.

       Q You mean Taiwan?

       AMB. GREENWOOD: The Taiwan -- that was the question you asked, Taiwan, right?

       Q I'm Yoshi Komori of the Sankei Shimbun. The Japanese government perhaps inadvertently downgraded the cabinet-level meeting aspects of the APEC meeting, APEC gathering, by announcing that neither the foreign minister nor the international trade minister will be attending the cabinet-level meeting -- making that kind of absence for the first time in the history of APEC. Would you read anything out of that?

       AMB. GREENWOOD: The decision about who to send to APEC meetings obviously is entirely up to the economy in question. Those of us who have spent time in Japan know that the Diet is very strict in how it deals with cabinet members, so we understand that, and we certainly respect it. And, in addition, Japan has the advantage of having two excellent vice ministers -- or one vice minister, one deputy minister -- foreign affairs and MITI, who will very ably represent Japan at the meeting.

       Q Thank you. Chris Rugaber from BNA Publications. I was wondering if I could ask -- if you could expand at all on the security-counterterrorism that you said there would be some specific statements -- if you could give any other indication on what areas, such as cargo security or anything else like that? And, also, are there any increased worries about security becoming more prominent on the agenda given what happened in Indonesia last week?

       AMB. GREENWOOD: I think that the fight against terrorism was certainly very high in our list of priorities for the meeting, even before the Bali bombings. And, as you suggested, it's even more so now. So certainly that will increase the attention being paid to this particular issue.

       In terms of what we have in mind, we are looking at -- the basic approach is to find measures that will not only make our economic infrastructure more secure, but will also make it more efficient. So it really is a combined -- it's a combination of security and trade facilitation that we are trying to get at. The reason for that is that we obviously cannot respond to the threat of terrorism by shutting down transportation, shutting down travel, because obviously that would inflict huge economic harm on us, and would in fact probably not -- almost certainly not help us catch the terrorists. And so what we have to do is find ways of doing both.

       Now, a good example of how we can do that is seen on the Canadian border, where today legitimate trade crosses the Canadian border faster than before 9/11. And we have done that by introducing new forms of cooperation between us and Canada, introducing new -- or at least maybe not brand-new, but certainly more advanced technologies on the border. That allows us to better identify high-risk shipments -- to inspect those and better identify low-risk shipments to let them go through freely. And so the basic principle of being able to do both at the same time is what we are trying to get at, and that's what we have been successful in doing, at least starting on the Canadian border. And we see every reason why we should be expanding that kind of vision to the entire Asia-Pacific region.

       Q Takashi Amaki (ph) with Asahi Shimbun. Some people say that the importance of the APEC has declined a lot after the negotiations about the EVSL failed in 1998 I think. Do you agree? What is necessary for the APEC to revive its power and influence ?

       AMB. GREENWOOD: I disagree -- (laughter) -- but I have to say that -- you know that. The -- I do disagree, but actually it's in some ways because of EVSL that we now have a much better defined mission than I think we had before. And let me explain that.

       The way that APEC relates to trade liberalization, but which I mean cutting of tariffs and removal of restrictions on services -- that is, the way APEC relates to WTO -- has always been that we work on trying to build a consensus within APEC, and then taking that to Geneva and to that Geneva process, and try then using that as a force to drive forward the conclusion of negotiations there -- whether it's the new round, or the information technology agreement, some package of tariff and service liberalization. And that has been very successful. We were very successful in helping to close out the Uruguay Round. We were the pioneers on ITA, the Information Technology Agreement. As I mentioned earlier, we helped launch the Doha development agenda. And that's not too surprising, since the region as a whole and the APEC members account for 60 percent of world trade. And so we already are a huge part. And so that's been helpful.

       What we haven't been able to do -- what EVSL showed was difficult to do was to come up with a package of tariff cuts that were going to be separate from a round, or to do preferential tariff cuts within the region multilaterally in a way that would obviously have to be consistent with WTO. And we frankly haven't found a way to do that. And so that really isn't our comparative advantage, our strength.

       So one of our strengths is to help push the Geneva process on the trade liberalization side. But one thing I wanted to emphasize is that we have a very important role, and one that we are going to increase from here on out, in trade facilitation; that is, lowering the cost of trade through streamlining customs, port logistics, e- government, harmonization of standards. These things are not sexy -- I understand that. And if I went on with my list, I would put you all to sleep -- if I haven't already. But in fact they are very important.

       The World Bank has just done a study -- it is going to be released in a couple of weeks -- maybe it's this week -- and it shows that trade facilitation can have the same order of magnitude of results in terms of increased trade as trade liberalization. Obviously trade liberalization remains very, very important. But trade facilitation is also very, very important. And here is something where the APEC has been working very hard, and can work harder to advance trade facilitation in ways that business and our people, our consumers, will realize very much the benefits of.

       An example is ports. This study looked at port logistics around the region, and just addressing port logistics will result in tremendous increases in trade -- about $155 billion worth of increases in trade -- that's an annual increase over what it would be without those changes. So these are very significant numbers, and it's where APEC has a real role to play. It's things we can do, certainly with -- there is no international organization or negotiations that are required. We are able to do those among ourselves, and realize those benefits among ourselves.

       Q Mr. Ambassador, I am (Vincent Chen ?) with the United Daily News. You just mentioned that you are still looking for a strong statement on counterterrorism. Does that mean that there is still not any consensus among the economies? How strong will that statement be if there is any?

       I have another question about China and Taiwan. I am just wondering has the U.S. scheduled any bilateral ministerial or leaders meetings with the representatives from either Taiwan or China?

       AMB. GREENWOOD: On the last question, the answer is no, there won't be any bilaterals at the leader level in Los Cabos. I think as you all know, of course, the president will be meeting President Jiang Zemin in Crawford the day before the meeting.

       The first question was I've forgotten now.

       Q On the statement on counterterrorism.

       AMB. GREENWOOD: Oh, counterterrorism. We expect it is going to be a very strong statement and a very substantive one. But, yes, you are right, we are still working out the details. Because it is going to be a very specific statement with some real concrete outcomes that does require a very careful set of consultations, and we are working that right now with our friends in APEC.

       Q You did say that you don't have any leaders meeting, bilateral leaders meeting with either Taiwan or China in the APEC?

       AMB. GREENWOOD: In Los Cabos.

       Q In Los Cabos. How about the ministerial meeting?

       AMB. GREENWOOD: Actually the ministerial meetings are still being worked out, so I don't have any comment. But they would no be -- actually I don't know who they might be meeting with on the bilateral side in this though.

       Q Thank you. Jose Lopez of the Mexican News Agency. In light of these recent terrorist incidents, is the U.S. government cooperating with the Mexican authorities in any way to shore up security for the meeting?

       And, secondly, can you talk about the agenda for the bilateral meeting between President Bush and President Fox in the APEC meeting?

       AMB. GREENWOOD: On the first, Mexico has been -- has had excellent security procedures and arrangements for the entire year. You should be aware that APEC is not just a meeting once a year. We have roughly well over 150 meetings every year, and must have had at least well over a dozen major meetings in Mexico this year. And all of them have been -- the arrangements have been excellent. I don't anticipate there will be any extra measures as a result of the Bali bombings. There will be very, very high security, as there was going to be in any case. And, again, we have been very pleased with the arrangements.

       I am afraid I am not -- I'll have to -- you will have to ask the question about the bilateral between the president, President Bush and President Fox, to someone over at State Department who follows the bilateral relationship. I don't, and I apologize. One of the things that they will talk about, obviously, is how to make this meeting a success and they both have shared President Fox's vision for implementation and action, and making APEC an organization that can yield concrete outcomes. And I am sure that is going to come up.

       Q Can you elaborate on the Life Science Forum? And specifically, are you talking about encouraging the development of new patents in the region or manufacturing drugs that are already patented in the West? I'm Kerry Kirby (ph) from the San Francisco Chronicle.

       AMB. GREENWOOD: It's -- some of the final details are still being working out on many of these things, and so I don't want to go into too much detail. The Life Science Forum is about, however, how to promote, to stimulate the research and development of new innovative drugs. And so the patent system, the regulatory system for approving new products -- all those will be matters of discussion.

       Q Erich Shih with TV BS Channel Taiwan. Just a simple question of regarding agenda. The leadership meeting, the information available to the press simply says that the leadership meeting is taking place on the 26th and the 27th. But would you care to elaborate a bit more in terms of when the leaders will be doing what in the morning or the afternoon or in the evening?

       AMB. GREENWOOD: For that kind of information I guess I'd really have to refer you to our Mexican hosts. They will I am sure let the host know a little bit more. I can tell you that the meeting will open in the early afternoon of the 26th, and will close shortly after lunch on the 27th.

       Q Doug Palmer with Reuters. I just wondered if you could be any more specific about what you would like to see in regards to a statement about the WTO and the importance of completing those talks. And also you said kind of just in passing that I guess the U.S. government would have more to say about FTAs next week. Could you elaborate on that at all?

       AMB. GREENWOOD: On the first, I guess really the two things are that we are looking -- that we are looking for a strong statement that we intend to proceed and conclude an ambitious round within the timeframe that we have all agreed to; that is, January 1, 2005. And then we are working on -- and I really can't be too much more specific about this, because we are still working it out -- on some of those common positions where we can say that we are working together on these, and these are some of the common objectives APEC members have in the new round.

       I should add that also the things that we are doing within APEC regionally -- like increasing transparency and pushing the digital economy -- that these will be -- these are important also in terms of contributions to the global trading system. This is building up these disciplines all around the region, around the world, that can then lead to becoming multilateral trade disciplines.

       And the second one was --

       Q You mentioned that you would have more to say about FTAs in the coming --

       AMB. GREENWOOD: Oh, no -- yeah -- that's still being worked on, so I have nothing more to add on that.

       Q Oliver Lin (ph) with the Commercial Times from Taiwan. Asian exporters are very much concerned with the shut down of Western Coast ports. And it is very possible that this question or this issue will be raised at the APEC meeting. And what are you prepared to say or do to mitigate the apprehension of the exporters? Thank you.

       AMB. GREENWOOD: The president has a number of choices in front of him on that, and I am certainly not in a position to say at all. I don't know what kinds of -- what decision is he going to make. But I can say that I am sure it's something that he is looking at very, very seriously, because we also understand that this is a serious issue, both for our trading partners but also for our own economy.

       Q (Inaudible) -- Economic Times, New Delhi.

       Now, India has had steady economic growth for years now, we have been picking up economic speed -- is there any move to have India a part of APEC for instance -- to have a formal role for India within APEC?

       AMB. GREENWOOD: Currently we have a moratorium on new membership in APEC, that expires I think it's 2006, '07 -- something like that. So we are not considering new membership now. We do have an arrangement for participation as guests in various working groups. In fact, India is active in several of the groups in that capacity, and we certainly welcome that.

       Q Sawaki (ph) with Tokyo Shimbun. Just a simple question. Are there any countries that are not sending their top leaders to the summit meeting? And I would like to know who will be the representative of Taiwan this year.

       AMB. GREENWOOD: I see, it's not a simple question. (Laughter.) Our understanding is that there will be leaders from -- I am afraid -- I am just going to have to say that that's a question you are going to have to direct to the Mexican hosts. Neither the -- the situation with the Taiwan transportation has been worked out. It's quite satisfactory, but I don't believe it's been announced, so until it is there is nothing I can say. And then the same with the other representatives.

       Q (Off mike.)

       AMB. GREENWOOD: Has it been announced? Okay. Then I can say that. We are pleased. (Laughter.) I have been too busy writing papers to know. Well, it's Lee Yuan-tseh, and Lee Yuan-tseh, is obviously a very respected international figure, a Nobel Prize winner, and we think is an excellent choice.

       Q Glenn Van Sutton (ph), CNN International. You mentioned at the beginning of your comments that one of the themes would be this sort of results-oriented conference this time, really looking to get something out of it. As I can recall, just about every APEC conference has taken that stand at the beginning, saying, We are really going to get something done this time. At the end of the day, of course, it just depends on the political will and economic factors within the host country as to how far they get in implementing anything.

       You mentioned that there would be specific goals and timelines, that sort of thing announced in relation to various topics. Can you give us any sort of preview of what some of those might be, what the timeline might be? And would there be any sort of way that you could hold the participants to fulfilling their obligations -- a penalty, if you will, if they didn't?

       AMB. GREENWOOD: What we have in mind -- first of all, it is not a legal obligation -- so let me make that clear. We are looking for high-level political commitments. And you are right, follow-through is going to be -- it's the key in monitoring -- it's going to be key to that. And so what we -- while I can't get into specifics, I can say that we are looking at pretty specific statements about what they would do domestically, in many cases with dates supplied. And we would have a process for monitoring the progress made. There would be no -- this is again not a legal obligation, and there is no dispute settlement mechanism in APEC- -nothing like that -- no provisions for sanctions.

       We go into this with the confidence that particularly when a leader makes a political commitment that it will in fact be carried out. And for those commitments that have been made in the past, you know, they -- I think the record is actually better than one would think. Even I would argue that even the Bogor goal which people have a tendency to be -- to dismiss -- if you look at the record in the last 15 years in Asia, the degree of tariff cutting -- I should say the Asia-Pacific -- the amount of tariffs that have been cut, some of the benefits in terms of trade facilitation are actually quite significant. Asia still has particularly developing countries of Asia have on average the lowest -- lower tariff average tariffs than Latin America, Africa, Central South Asia and Central Europe. They have a relatively good tariff regime, and that's improved significantly in the last 15 years. So there's been a lot of progress even there. So it's that -- the difference is that in the past we had been quite fond of documents that have been titled "nonbinding, voluntary principles for X." And while that's been helpful in terms of getting an idea of what are best practices, the difference is this year and last year what we are trying to do more is focus on -- okay, we know that these are nonbinding and voluntary, but we now are going to be doing at least this: these set of transparency principles we are going to agree to actually do, and then we'll move on from there and see what more we can do. That's the difference this year.

       Q I'm -- (inaudible) -- News Network, Pakistan. After 9/11 there have been some visa restrictions for businessmen and students all over the world. Will there be some softening of visa restriction for APEC member countries? Will there be some priority given to the businessmen from these countries, or do you think they will be under the same category as the others are?

       AMB. GREENWOOD: We are aware of the problems and are trying to find ways to particularly alleviate the impact on business. In terms of this set of APEC meetings, we have not heard of any problems on the visa side. We are alert to them, so if there are any we are ready to move to try to facilitate getting a visa issued. But so far I have not heard of any visa problems pertaining to this particular meeting.

       MODERATOR: Thank you very much.

       AMB. GREENWOOD: Thank you.