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Apec strives to silence doubters
Sydney: “Twenty-one leaders,
one great city.” For weeks now, this catchy slogan has been
emblazoned across newspapers and billboards in an attempt to
persuade sceptical Sydney-siders that hosting the Apec
(Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) summit is not such a bad
thing. But it has been a hard sell. The slogan is only a small
part of the equation.
A fuller accounting brings in the 4,500 New South Wales police,
1,500 defence personnel, 450 federal police, one newly-purchased
water cannon and 500 recently-vacated prison beds to accommodate
all the arrested protesters. The security bill for Apec has
mushroomed to A$170 million according to one government estimate
– more than it cost to patrol the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
Then add the A$320 million which business groups claim will be
accrued by the decision from the New South Wales government to
give Sydney a public holiday today. And what of the impact on
small businesses unlucky enough to be situated “behind the wire”
– the rabble-resistant fence, 2.8m high and 5km long, which has
been dubbed “the great wall of Sydney” and has disfigured one of
the world’s most beautiful cities.
On the positive side of the ledger, over 4,000 overseas
officials and delegates will be descending on the city, wallets
hopefully bulging. And they will be watched, listened to and
written about by over 1,000 members of the foreign media. Still,
many Sydney-siders are left asking: what is Apec for?
In answer to that question, it is worth remembering that the
Apec forum is of the same extraction as the boomerang, the
combine harvester, the black box flight recorder and the Granny
Smith apple – it is an Australian invention. Former prime
minister Bob Hawke came up with the idea and in 1989, invited 11
countries to join him for the first summit at the Hyatt Hotel in
Canberra.
The self-serving aim was not just to boost trade and economic
co-operation, but to persuade Washington to accord the
Asia-Pacific region a higher diplomatic priority just as the
Cold War was drawing to an end. Hawke’s successor, Paul Keating,
had bigger and bolder ambitions for Apec, and persuaded Bill
Clinton to host the first leaders’ summit in Seattle in 1993.
But it is still easy to agree with a leading Australian
diplomat’s famously disdainful one-liner: that the Asia-Pacific
Economic Cooperation was “four adjectives in search of a noun”.
Peter Hartcher, the international editor of the Sydney Morning
Herald, goes further – suggesting that Apec is “21 leaders in
search of an agenda”.
Nobody doubts that the members of Apec have economic and
diplomatic clout. This summit will bring together countries
which account for 56% of the world’s economy, 40% of its
population and 48% of its international trade. Apec has six out
of the world’s 10 largest carbon emitters and five of the
world’s six largest standing armies.
In Indonesia, it has the world’s largest Muslim nation. But for
an international organisation to function effectively, it has to
be more than its sum of statistics. Fans of the Apec model
commonly cite three instances where it proved it punched its
diplomatic weight.
The first came at the inaugural leaders’ meeting in Seattle,
which Clinton used to help break the impasse over the stalled
“Uruguay round” of international trade talks. The second came in
1999, where the Apec summit in New Zealand helped pave the way
for Australia’s intervention in Timor Leste. And the third
happened in Vietnam, in November last year, when Apec leaders
agreed to a statement condemning North Korea’s nuclear test the
month before.
This year in Sydney it is hard to see where a concrete
diplomatic achievement anywhere near that scale will come from.
Prime minister John Howard has placed the environment at the top
of the agenda, since the world’s three most voracious energy
consumers – China, the US and Russia – are all in attendance.
But he knows that the summit will not produce any binding
targets for cutting greenhouse emissions.
Instead, he is aiming for something much less ambitious and much
more diplomatically opaque – reaching a regional consensus on a
post-Kyoto framework. – BBC
 
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