Harper arrives in Lima for Asia-Pacific summit
Published Saturday November 22nd, 2008
LIMA, Peru - Prime Minister Stephen Harper arrived Friday in the Peruvian capital for an Asia-Pacific leaders' summit that is expected to be dominated by talks on how to get ahead of the global financial crisis.
Harper left Ottawa Friday morning and landed in Lima early in the evening for this weekend's Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum meeting of 21 national leaders.
Before his departure, Harper suggested free trade could be an antidote to the financial crisis that has gripped much of the world and shaken financial markets.
Senior Canadian government officials have said that the APEC leaders are expected to follow up on last week's G20 meetings in Washington, hosted by U.S. President George W. Bush.
Bush hopes to win more converts at the Lima summit for an action plan aimed at showing governments have the will and the means to halt the turmoil.
The Associated Press reported that Bush arrived in Peru Friday afternoon on what could be his final overseas trip as president.
"APEC is an important meeting this time, particularly given the financial situation in the world," Bush said in a pre-trip interview with America TV.
"APEC comes right after the economic summit we had here in America. So it means that it has the chance to embrace the principles, but it also has a chance for countries that did not participate in the summit here in Washington to express their views."
Bush and eight of the other leaders at the Lima meetings were also in Washington last weekend when the Group of 20 - consisting of the world's richest countries including Canada, as well as emerging powers such as China, Russia and Brazil - adopted the package of measures aimed at keeping the current crisis from pushing the global economy into a deep and prolonged recession.
So far, investors have not been assured and financial markets have remained extremely volatile.
The White House insists that it is pursuing the right course and believes that enlisting more countries' endorsement of the G20 action plan will eventually work at restoring market stability.
With a new U.S. president set to take over in just two months, Bush said he is hopeful that the actions he has taken on the economy "will make it easier for president-elect (Barack) Obama, not harder."
White House aides stressed that Bush was not viewing the trip as some sort of farewell tour but an opportunity to advance his goals in the closing days of his presidency.
Bush is hoping that the APEC countries, which include a number of nations that benefit significantly from trade, will promise, as the G20 nations did, not to raise new economic barriers to trade over the next year, hoping to avoid the beggar-thy-neighbour policies that helped turn the 1930s downturn into the Great Depression.
The APEC leaders were also expected to endorse a new commitment to wrap up the broad outlines of an agreement on the current round of global trade talks, known as the Doha Round, by the end of December.
Charles Freeman, a China expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said it may be hard for some Asian countries to resist some "snide commentary" since they were told the way to emerge from their 1997-98 currency crisis was by curbing deficit spending, allowing bad banks to fail and increasing interest rates - a formula not being followed now by the United States.
"We're lowering interest rates, we're propping up banks," Freeman said. "So maybe what's good for the goose wasn't good for the gander."
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