APEC Trade Ministers Meet Amid Support for China's WTO Entry
A report summarizing recommendations for the trade ministers worked out by senior officials from the APEC member economies also called for China's speedy access to the trade body, AFP reported.
World Trade Organization Chief Michael Moore said to seal China's entry to the global trade body were gathering pace ahead of a formal meeting in Geneva set for the end of this month.
Moore also said he would urge Asia-Pacific trade ministers to push China's accession bid.
"I'm hopeful that ministers... are able to negotiate and get a little closer and take their position to Geneva at the end of the month so the working party can get into more detail and the working party can get closer to an agreement," Moore told Reuters in an interview.
WTO headquarters said on Tuesday it would convene a five-day formal session of a working party on June 28 for negotiations on China's bid to join the 141-nation trade group.
"We're not a World Trade Organization until China is a member," Moore told a news conference on the sidelines of trade talks of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation group in China's financial capital Shanghai.
China hosts the APEC meetings this year and ministers see this as giving added impetus to its 14-year quest for WTO membership.
"(The ministers should) welcome the substantial progress made in the WTO accession negotiations for China and urge for the rapid completion of its accession negotiations within this year," the report said.
APEC was set up in 1989 as an informal talking group for a dozen Asia-Pacific economies, and its membership has grown steadily despite severe troubles ranging from Japan's economic troubles to the Asian economic crisis in the late 1990s.
The forum is to hold a summit in Shanghai in October, marking the largest gathering of heads of state hosted by China since the founding of the communist state more than a half century ago.