Asian leaders tackle trade in China's shadow

CEBU, Philippines, Jan 14 (Reuters) Asian leaders will talk trade, energy and security today in a whirl of meetings that will underscore China's expanding regional role days after it wielded its UN veto to fend off censure of Myanmar.

The summit of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and neighbouring Asian powers -- China, Japan, India and South Korea among them -- is also likely to discuss North Korea's nuclear weapons, as well as spurring regional trade at a time when the World Trade Organisation's global liberalisation talks are mired in quarrels.

At the gathering on Cebu in the Philippines, 10-member ASEAN yesterday flagged its determination to rise as a world player by speeding up its goal of regional economic integration by five years to 2015 and agreeing to become a rules-based group with teeth to discipline wayward members.

Today, the Asian countries will also examine the possibility of a regional fuel stockpile, according to the draft of a statement seen by Reuters.

The arrival on Cebu of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao late yesterday evening was a reminder that his nation's influence and decisions are key to many of these thorny regional issues.

In contrast to the generally laidback reception given to most other regional leaders, Wen's arrival was a tightly choreographed fanfare.

Company-sponsored billboards greeting the premier and featuring his spectacled face dotted Cebu roads, and local men dressed in white shirts with the red Chinese flag on their collars were assembled to greet him at the airport.

Just a day before Wen arrived, China delivered a reminder of its clout by vetoing a US move in the UN Security Council to condemn ASEAN-member Myanmar's human rights abuses.

''NO THREAT'' China, one of the five permanent Security Council members whose ''no'' vote automatically kills a United Nations resolution, said Washington's draft resolution did not warrant Security Council attention.

''The situation in Myanmar does not constitute a threat to regional and international peace and security,'' Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said in Beijing on Saturday.

The US resolution urged Myanmar, formerly called Burma, to release political prisoners, move towards democracy and stop attacks against ethnic minorities.

The dispute over how to handle Myanmar has exposed rifts in ASEAN, an organisation that has prided itself on consensus decision-making. Some members say ASEAN should not interfere in Myanmar's domestic affairs; others say the junta's rights record is already an international issue.

Thailand's Foreign Minister Nitya Pibulsonggram said in Cebu yesterday that it was now up to Southeast Asia to show it could handle the deeply isolated military junta.

On Sunday, China's Wen will also meet Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun.

Those discussions are likely to cover plans for a Chinese leader -- Wen or President Hu Jintao -- to visit Japan in coming months, marking a warming of ties after years of bitter hostility under Abe's predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, who regularly visited a Tokyo war shrine that critics said glorified war criminals among its dead.

The three East Asian countries are also likely to discuss North Korea, which last month returned to international talks aimed at persuading it to give up nuclear weapons.

Those talks failed to make any breakthrough, and South Korean officials have said the North may be preparing a second nuclear test after its first in October 2005.

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