Agence France Presse
October 17, 2001 Wednesday 9:32 AM Eastern Time
: APEC officials
BY RACHEL MORARJEE
SHANGHAI, Oct 17 Debate among Pacific Rim countries intensified Wednesday over whether to move a World Trade Organisation meeting from Qatar next month owing to security fears arising from the US attacks on Afghanistan.
The Qatari government was to decide Thursday whether to go ahead with hosting the November 9-13 WTO gathering, a senior official in the Gulf emirate said.
"Up to now there has been no change, we will decide our position tomorrow," the official told AFP in Doha, refusing to give any further details. Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, speaking on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Shanghai, said the Qataris remained keen on hosting the meeting.
"The Qatar government has been very insistent that it be in Doha and no one has put up their hand and said we are not going to Doha. So as long as that's the case it will be in Doha," Downer told reporters.
A senior Latin American delegate at APEC said Singapore was being discussed informally here as a possible new venue.
"Officials and ministers are mentioning the possibility of holding the WTO summit in Singapore instead of Doha," he told AFP in Shanghai.
"Besides Singapore, I haven't heard of any other country being considered as an alternative to Qatar in the APEC meetings," he said.
Other APEC delegates said a possible venue switch was being discussed during breaks in talks among the 21-member grouping's trade and foreign ministers.
An official at Singapore's ministry of trade and industry said no decision had been made to shift the venue.
"The issue of venue is one for the WTO General Council to address and decide," the official said.
Speculation of a switch to Singapore has intensified as protestors take to the streets in Muslim-majority nations to denounce the US-British air raids on Afghanistan, launched in retaliation for the September 11 atrocities in the US.
WTO trade ministers met in Singapore last weekend, and Singaporean Trade Minister George Yeo acknowledged that a number of countries including his own had been informally sounded out over stepping in.
However, Canadian Minister of International Trade Pierre Pettigrew said Doha remained the planned venue for the ministerial talks, which will attempt to revive a trade liberalisation drive abandoned at Seattle in 1999.
"Obviously members are monitoring the security evolution because of the uncertainties of the region, but for the time being I have not heard of any decision being made" to switch countries, Pettigrew told reporters in Shanghai.
Kyodo News agency, quoting Japanese foreign ministry officials, said Singapore would step in to offer a last-minute alternative venue because of fears about holding the meeting in the Middle Eastern state.
But a high-ranking Japanese trade official said the report was wide of the mark.
"Preparations are under way. My understanding is that we will have the meeting in Qatar as planned," he said in Shanghai.
"But we have to consider destabilising factors in the region," added the official, who declined to be identified.
EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy said Tuesday that Doha still looked set to remain the venue.
Lamy recalled that Doha had been the only candidate to hold the meeting, which will be the first since the ill-fated gathering in Seattle two years ago that failed to launch a new trade liberalisation round.:
