By Bill Tarrant, Reuters
Monday, January 15, 2007; 5:52 AM
CEBU, Philippines (Reuters) - Leaders from 16 Asian nations, representing half the world's population, pledged on Monday to develop alternative energy supplies and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The agreement capped a week of high-level meetings on the Philippine resort island of Cebu that waded into issues as diverse as disease, disaster, trade and terrorism.
Southeast Asian leaders along with the heads of China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand held their second East Asia summit in a more purposeful manner after last year's inaugural meeting.
Beijing and Tokyo used the forum sponsored by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to further mend ties.
The 16 leaders urged North Korea on Monday to abandon nuclear weapons and respond to humanitarian concerns, including abductions of Japanese in previous decades.
But while Northeast Asian diplomacy featured at the summit, its centrepiece was an Energy Security pact that seeks to reduce the region's dependence on costly imported crude and help stave off climate change.
Most of the goals in the pact are vague or voluntary, however. And unlike the European Union, which last week unveiled ambitious energy proposals to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 20 percent, the leaders of some of the most polluted countries on the planet offered no concrete targets.
New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark told Reuters in an interview the comparison was not entirely apt.
"This is very early days in the East Asia context, to be talking about targets," she said. The EU has commitments to cut emission under the Kyoto Protocol, while many of the East Asian countries have not signed up to the accord.
Heavy emphasis was put on promoting biofuels that use plantation crops such as sugar or palm oil as feed stock, not surprising since these are huge export commodities in Southeast Asia.
But there is no doubt about the magnitude of the problem facing these countries. Greenhouse gas emissions are expected to triple in Southeast Asia by 2030, while demand for energy will double during that period, according to ASEAN data.
FREE TRADE BLOC
The head of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), Haruhiko Kuroda, urged East Asian countries to create a vast trade bloc from India to New Zealand to pull 750 million of their three billion citizens out of dire poverty.
Officials at the summit said that while the idea is being studied, any such bloc is far into the future, if at all, and ASEAN's priority is to sign FTAs with individual countries represented at the summit.
"It's a big idea and I think the world needs big ideas in trade," Clark said.
With world trade talks stalled since July and time running out to revive them, countries around the Pacific rim have agreed or are trying to hammer out a "noodle bowl" of around 50 local FTAs.
Both Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and China's Premier Wen Jiabao are vying to influence ASEAN as it becomes a more integrated political and economic bloc.
Abe highlighted Tokyo's desire to play a more prominent security role in the region by agreeing to support Southeast Asian maritime security.
China and ASEAN agreed on Sunday to slash barriers on trade in services, which Wen said was a "crucial step" toward creating the world's most populous free trade area.
"With the ASEAN moving forward toward firm accords on its own charter, security, overseas workers and trade, the prospect for the region becoming a formidable bloc in the world is well within reach," said President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of the Philippines, the host nation.
The leaders, who also endorsed a bird flu prevention "road map" that will share best practices, are anxious not to develop into a glorified chat room.
They wondered after last year's inaugural meeting if it was worth having another, Arroyo told a concluding news conference.
"What has made it successful going into the second year is that it was not just a talk shop. We were talking about concrete areas of cooperation and most specifically energy security."
(Additional reporting by Chris Buckley, Rosemarie Francisco and Manny Mogato)
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