By DEAN VISSER Associated Press Writer
SINGAPORE (AP) - The United States needs to develop a more coherent policy on Asia despite the distractions of domestic politics, Singapore's deputy prime minister said Friday.
"The U.S. is dealing with Asia as a bundle of disparate issues without a coherent policy framework," Lee Hsien Loong said in an opening speech at the Williamsburg Conference, an international forum on U.S.-Asia relations.
In this U.S. presidential election year, each candidate "feels free to woo votes with strident statements of high principle, unfettered by the responsibilities of office," he said. "But election year static and rhetoric must not cloud important U.S. interests in Asia."
Lee cited free trade and U.S.-China relations, which he called crucial to Asian stability, as examples.
The United States should quickly grant China permanent Normal Trade Relations status, he said. Such status would lower tariffs on Chinese goods shipped to the United States.
"This will remove the irritant of the annual ritual of Congressional review of China's NTR status," he said.
Lee urged the United States to push steps to uphold free trade, despite the objections of unions and other non-governmental organizations whose protests kept November's World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in from launching a new round of global free-trade talks.
The failure of the WTO talks "showed that a small but vociferous group of NGOs could hijack the agenda, sidetrack U.S. trade policy and scuttle a deal that could have benefited many countries, including the U.S.," he said.:
