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Around the World

U.S., China to discuss WTO membership

Speaking at a Pacific Rim economic conference that has been overshadowed by violence in Indonesia and the China-U.S. initiative, U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky said "substantive"WTO negotiations will resume shortly.

Getting the world's most populous nation into the club of trading nations is a long-standing goal of the Clinton administration as well as of the Chinese. But any such proposal will face a colossal battle in the U.S. Congress.

The agreement to resume talks, reached in a late meeting with Barshefsky and her Chinese counterpart, Trade Minister Shi Guangsheng, set the stage for Saturday's one-on-one meeting here between President Clinton and Chinese President Jiang Zemin.

The Clinton-Ziang meeting will take place on the sidelines of the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Auckland .

Trade experts in Washington and elsewhere said a pact could be reached in as little as two weeks once

formal negotiations resumed. China's accession to WTO must also be approved by other nations, but

the U.S. blessing is key.

China wants to join the global trade group by November, when the WTO launches a new round of

trade negotiations in Seattle.

A recent study by the International Trade Commission said U.S. exports to China would probably

increase initially by 10 percent, while China's exports to the United States would grow 7 percent, if

China joins WTO on terms the two countries were discussing earlier this year.

That would have little impact on China's $57 billion trade surplus with the United States, and would

add a meager $1.7 billion to the U.S. economy. Advocates argue the commercial payoff would come

in the longer term as China's economy grows and its huge market becomes more accessible to U.S.

companies.

"Minister Shi and I agreed to work jointly to resolve outstanding issues as soon as possible,''

Barshefsky told reporters. "We did not establish any specific timeline, but I do think that the

discussion underscored the desire to re-engage in substantive discussion."

Though the 21-nation APEC gathering here has no official voice in either the WTO talks or the

genocide taking place on the neighboring island of East Timor, Indonesia, both events are enormously

important to the agenda here.

Indonesian President B.J. Habibie, expecting nonstop criticism from protesters over his military's

alleged role in the mass slaughter, bowed out of the five-day meeting. This followed an earlier,

unrelated announcement by Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad that he too would not

attend.

East Timor also colors the U.S.-China talks on WTO.

China's opposition to putting East Timor on the APEC agenda has strained relations with some other

APEC members, whose support China may need for WTO accession. Beijing is concerned, analysts

say, that a U.N. decision to send troops into the strife-torn island without Jakarta's approval could

serve as a model for similar action in Tibet or some other Chinese-held area.

"From China's point of view, it's very obvious that endorsing something like this would create an

enormous precedent,"said Paul Clark, a China specialist at the University of Auckland.

China's WTO entry also hit early turbulence over an APEC plan to support simultaneous entry into

the WTO for China and Taiwan. Beijing has scotched that APEC initiative as well, analysts say, this

time over concerns that the world might view China and Taiwan as being on equal diplomatic footing.

China considers Taiwan a renegade province.

Other gaps were exposed Thursday, as members bickered over the structure of future WTO talks and

the posture Asian nations should take in the upcoming Seattle round of negotiations.

(Optional add end)

Indeed, while many of its members are emerging from Asia's two-year economic crisis, APEC's

longer-term outlook is far less clear as it confronts a number of political, economic and social strains.

After early bold calls for a regional free trade area for richer nations by 2010 and developing countries

by 2020, the group has done little to reduce barriers and otherwise assemble the building blocks

needed to get there. Last year it punted by handing over to the WTO decisions on some 15 commercial

sectors involving $1.5 trillion in trade after Japan refused to budge on negotiations over fish and

timber.

Critics say APEC's unwieldy structure and dependence on consensus makes dramatic progress

unlikely, even as it declares victory over a series of relatively minor agreements covering e-commerce,

business travel and paperwork reduction. Supporters counter, however, that such an ambitious goal

involving half the world's population and economic output can't be completed overnight.

That said, this year in particular, East Asians find themselves in no mood to lower barriers or endure

more painful competition while their wounds from the two-year Asia crisis are still raw.

LA TIMES-WASHINGTON POST-09-09-99 1924EDT

Moscow blast called a terrorist attack

With other Russian officials contradicting Mayor Yuri Luzhkov's statement, the cause of the explosion remained unclear last night.

The explosion on the capital's southeastern edge killed at least 32 people, including three children, injured 249 and was believed to have left dozens more buried in the debris.

Luzhkov called it "a powerful terrorist act," and said military explosives were used. But he offered no concrete evidence of a terrorist link.

"The intentions of the bandits to take revenge for their defeat in Dagestan" were behind the blast, Luzhkov said, referring to Islamic rebels who have been battling Russian forces in the southern republic of Dagestan.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and other officials said early Thursday that the blast apparently was caused by a natural gas leak - which could bring Luzhkov under fire for negligence in maintaining the city's buildings. Still others suggested that fireworks or explosives stored in the building went off accidentally.

But as the investigation deepened, many said they believed a bomb ripped apart the apartment building near the Moscow River.

''The nature of the damage and the number of casualties'' suggests an explosive device was placed in the building, said the Federal Security Service, the country's main intelligence agency.

An anonymous caller told the Interfax news agency Thursday that the explosion and a Saturday night bomb blast in Dagestan were in response to the fighting there.

Earlier this week, the Moscow correspondent of Deutsche Welle, Germany's international broadcasting service, received a call from a man warning there would be three explosions in Moscow.

The claims' authenticity could not be confirmed. The Federal Security Service said it had not received any claims of responsibility.

About 50 residents of the building remained unaccounted for Thursday evening, Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu said.

The explosion early Thursday also severely damaged an apartment building across the street, killing three residents, he said.

Vladimir Stavitsky, the deputy press chief of the Federal Security Service, said either industrial explosives equivalent to 660-880 pounds of TNT or a great quantity of explosives used in fireworks had caused the blast.

The intelligence agency has identified possible suspects and begun to search for them, he said.

Sergei Bogdanov, press officer of the Moscow branch of the security service, said the blast may have been caused by explosives stored in the building.

''It's common knowledge that there are warehouses of the most incredible things in basements and rented apartments,'' he told NTV television.

But Luzhkov said late Thursday that a military explosive called hexogen was the most probable cause of the blast, Interfax reported.

Interior Minister Vladimir Rushailo said an investigation would be complete within one or two days.

The explosion shortly after midnight collapsed all nine stories in the center section of the block-long building, but left apartments intact on either side. The building is on the edge of one of the huge complexes of apartment buildings that ring Moscow, and is bordered on one side by grassy fields and railway tracks.

Rescue teams used cranes, bulldozers and dump trucks to remove mangled trees and huge slabs of shattered concrete. As the day wore on, they were pulling out only bodies.

Russia has been shaken in recent days by terrorist attacks. The bomb in Dagestan on Saturday night destroyed a military housing complex, killing more than 60 people.

A bomb in a shopping center in central Moscow last week killed one person. Authorities are still investigating who was responsible for that attack.

However, poor maintenance and shoddy construction also have been blamed for several explosions in Russia. A gas blast in a Moscow apartment building in July 1998 killed six people.

09-10-99