SE Asian leaders to urge kickstart for Doha round

CEBU, Philippines, Jan 10 (Reuters) Southeast Asian leaders will call on China, the United States and other major players to revive deadlocked world trade talks as they push on with regional trade deals at an annual summit in the Philippines this week.

The 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) will urge a high-level push to resolve an impasse over farm goods that has stalled global trade talks in a one-page statement on Saturday, officials said oday.

''The statement will be quite clear that the ASEAN is an open regional grouping and is very much anxious to restart the Doha round negotiations this year,'' Jose Antonio Buencamino, a Philippine representative to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), said.

''The leaders will call on major players to contribute a lot to this breakthrough.'' Trade topped the agenda on the first day of the summit, which will gather presidents and prime ministers from China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand as well as ASEAN leaders on the central resort island of Cebu.

With time running short for the Doha round of trade talks -- launched in 2001 in a bid to ease poverty and boost the global economy -- Asian leaders are set to focus on cutting tariffs regionally when they meet on January 13-15.

The Philippines, which holds the rotating chairmanship of ASEAN, said the organisation was still aiming for a deal with Japan this year that would create a giant regional free trade zone.

''I think if we really try to put our shoulders to the wheel, we can still try to achieve it by March 2007,'' Vicente Kabigting, the head of the Philippine Bureau of International Trade Relations, told reporters.

ASEAN -- which groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam -- also hopes to ink a deal liberalising trade in services between its members and China in Cebu.

DOWNPOURS Senior officials were meeting today in a new -million convention centre, which was still being worked on by builders as they plugged holes ahead of forecasted downpours.

Manila postponed the original summit in December, ostensibly due to a typhoon. But the surprise move came days after Western governments said terrorists planned to disrupt the talks.

A crude bomb in the Philippines' restive south killed five people and injured at least 16 people today, the day before leaders start arriving in Cebu.

The Australian, British and Canadian embassies had warned that militants could strike cities in the south during the summit and have maintained their warnings of a terrorist threat in Cebu, where around 13,000 police and soldiers are on high alert.

The Philippine police have said there is no specific security threat to the meeting.

Nonetheless, regional security will likely dominate leaders' discussions due to a planned counter-terrorism declaration, post-coup jitters in Thailand and North Korea's nuclear ambitions.

Leaders from China, Japan and South Korea will hold a trilateral meeting on Sunday in Cebu, their first get-together since Japan's Shinzo Abe became Prime Minister.

Reuters KD GC2000