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COOLUM, Australia: APEC finance ministers will discuss how the
Asia-Pacific region can deal with climate change while also meeting
its expanding energy needs at a gathering in Australia beginning
Thursday.
Finance ministers from the 21 countries of the
Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum will hold a two-day meeting
in the Queensland resort town of Coolum to make policy
recommendations ahead of an APEC leaders’ summit in Sydney in
September.
Australian Treasurer Peter Costello, who is
hosting the event, said the most important challenge facing the
meeting was finding a model acceptable to all that would allow the
region to deal with climate change.
“We [APEC] have the world’s biggest
emitters—China and the United States. To have that discussion with
them and to see if we can get an agreement on principles for
managing carbon emissions and cooperation across the world’s major
economies would be a really good step forward,” he said.
He added that another major topic would be
energy security, asking: “How do developing countries such as
China secure the energy which they’ll need to drive their growth
forward in the decades that lie ahead?”
An Australian Treasury briefing on the Coolum
meeting said the agenda would include discussion on how the region
could meet critical energy infrastructure needs estimated at seven
trillion US dollars over the next 30 years.
“If this investment does not occur, the
resulting imbalance between energy demand and supply is likely to
result in higher and more volatile energy prices,” it said.
Costello denied the absence of US Treasury
Secretary Henry Paulson detracted from the importance of the
meeting, saying there would be no shortage of financial
heavyweights.
“We have got the new president of the World
Bank, Bob Zoellick, representatives of the Asian Development Bank,
the IMF,” Costello said.
“Compared to other APEC finance ministers’
meetings, this is an extremely high level of ministerial
involvement, and I think it will be a very significant meeting.”
Other ministers expected to attend are Japan’s
Koji Omi, China’s Jin Renqing, New Zealand’s Michael Cullen and
Canada’s James Flaherty.
US Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert Kimmitt will
appear on Paulson’s behalf.
Agreements from the meeting will be passed on to
the APEC leaders’ meeting in Sydney in September.
Security at the Coolum meeting is expected to be
tight, with police keen to avoid any repeat of the clashes with
protestors that marred a G20 meeting held in Melbourne last
November.
The 21 economies that make up APEC—and account
for a third of the world’s population—are Australia, Brunei,
Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea,
Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Philippines,
Russia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, United States and Vietnam.
--AFP
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