PENANG, Malaysia Russia, Vietnam and Peru joined the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum as official observers here Monday ahead of their full entry into the group in November, officials said. APEC leaders agreed at their last summit in Vancouver, Canada, in November to grant full membership to the three countries while placing a 10-year moratorium on others joining the group. Russian, Vietnamese and Peruvian delegates took up their positions as observers, as senior officials of the group opened the first of three meetings to prepare for this year's summit in Kuala Lumpur. UNDER APEC's alphabetical protocol, the three observer delegations were seated between the United States delegation and this year's chairman Abdul Razak Ramli, from Malaysia's International Trade and Industry Ministry. Russian President Boris Yeltsin is expected to take part in this year's summit along with Vietnamese Prime Minister Phan Van Kai and Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori alongside other world leaders ranging from u.s.

President Bill Clinton and Chinese President Jiang Zemin to Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto. The admission of three new members will boost APEC's membership to 21 in November when the group enters its 10th year of operations. A Russian official said his country's membership signalled a greater focus on the Asia-Pacific region as a whole. Until now, he said, Russia's relations with the region were concentrated on neighboring countries or major powers such as China, Japan Ind india.

Among the immediate challenges facing the three new members is the need to come up with individual action plans for liberalizing trade and investment similar to those adopted by APEC members in Japan in 1995. Under an agreement reached by APEC leaders in Indonesia two years earlier, APEC aims to achieve free trade and investment in the region by 2010 for industrialized members and 2020 for developing economies.

NGO Duc Thong, coordinator for external relations with APEC economies in the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry, said it would be difficult to draft the action plan. But we will try to meet the deadline, he said, adding that Vietnamese officials working on the draft hoped to finalize details by the end of March before seeking approval from the national leadership. We still have a lot of work to do, the official said, adding that Vietnam would probably consult with some of its closest trading partners before making the individual action plan public.

Vietnam's membership means that all countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will be represented in APEC except newcomers Laos and Myanmar which only joined ASEAN last year. Peru will meanwhile join Chile and Mexico as the third Latin American member of APEC. Before last year's decision to admit the three new members, Russia, Vietnam and Peru participated as guests in some of the 10 working groups and three other bodies operated by APEC. Among these groups, Russia has participated in those dealing with energy, fisheries, human resources development, industrial science and technology, marine resource conservation, telecommunications, and trade and investment data review, an APEC official said.

Peru has taken part in APEC working groups on fisheries, tourism and trade promotion. Vietnam has also participated in the trade promotion group as well as an experts' group on agricultural technical cooperation, the official said. Apart from the three newcomers, APEC's three other official observers are Jakarta-based ASEAN secretariat, the Fiji-based South Pacific Forum and the Singapore-based Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC), which groups government officials, business leaders and academics.

The present 18 members of APEC are Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and the United States. (AFP)