WASHINGTON - The United States will try to
prove its mettle as an Asian power as it welcomes Pacific leaders this week to
Hawaii, hoping a sweeping trade pact will bind together the fast-growing
region.
President Barack Obama will show his
sun-kissed native state to leaders of 20 other members of the Asia-Pacific
Economic Cooperation forum including China, Japan and Russia at talks that will
culminate Sunday.
At a time of economic doldrums in developed
nations and increasing clout by China, the United States hopes to use its APEC
chairmanship to set the terms of a trans-Pacific deal that could breathe life
into moribund global trade talks.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who will
take part in the summit, recently called for the United States to make a
similar investment in establishing Asia's order as it did in post-World War II
Europe.
Clinton, writing in Foreign Policy magazine,
said that the maintenance of peace in the region "is increasingly crucial
to global progress" and that more open markets would help create badly
needed jobs in the United States.
"We are committed to cementing APEC as
the Asia-Pacific's premier regional economic institution," Clinton wrote,
pointing to "demand from the region that America play an active role"
in building its institutions.
Michael Green, who served as the top adviser
on Asia to former president George W. Bush, said the United States had a strong
self-interest in focusing on APEC as the bloc - which accounts for more than
half of global economic output - spans the Pacific.
"We don't want to see an architecture of
trade arrangements and political arrangements in Asia that draw a line down the
middle of the Pacific," said Green, now a scholar at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies and Georgetown University.
Obama will head the following week to the
Indonesian resort island of Bali for the East Asia Summit - a meeting with many
of the same leaders, but one where some Asian nations had earlier wanted to
exclude the United States.
Obama, who early this month also went to the
French Riviera for the Group of 20 summit, may face domestic pressure not to
spend time at a third summit in Indonesia, where he spent part of his
childhood.
Ernie Bower, also at the Center for Strategic
and International Studies, said an Obama cancelation would reinforce "a
narrative - that the Chinese have promoted, in some sense - that the Americans
are interested in Asia but they're not consistently engaged."
The administration has planned hectic travel
to go along with the summit season. Obama plans to head from Hawaii to
Australia and Clinton will go to the Philippines, both historic allies of the
United States.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta recently held
talks in key security allies Japan and South Korea as well as Indonesia, which
the administration sees as a growing partner due to its size, location and
tradition of moderate Islam.
Panetta vowed that Asia would remain a US
priority despite looming cuts to the defense budget, saying in Japan: "We
have the opportunity to strengthen our presence in the Pacific, and we
will."
In Hawaii, the United States hopes to announce
with eight other countries
- Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New
Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam
- the outlines of a free trade deal known as
the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
US Trade Representative Ron Kirk recently
called it a "21st-century" pact that would ensure labor and
environmental standards and pledged to move ahead quickly to flesh out its
details.
Leaders will be watching closely in Honolulu
if Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda brings Japan into talks on the Trans-Pacific
Partnership, a step that would leave China conspicuously on the outside of the
US-brokered pact.
But Japan's main agricultural cooperative is
strongly opposed, fearing that foreign products would swamp the protected
sector. Some US lawmakers are also opposed as they fear stiff competition from
top dairy exporter New Zealand.
Critics of globalization have criticized the
Trans-Pacific Partnership for a lack of detail and voiced fears that US
pharmaceutical giants could use the pact to raise the cost of medicine in
countries with state-backed health care.
AFP
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