Vietnam president sees WTO entry in H1 2006
PUSAN - Vietnam expects to join the World Trade Organisation in the first half of next year, later than its self-imposed deadline of the end of 2005, President Tran Duc Luong said on Friday.
Luong also said he expected leaders at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Pusan to adopt a Vietnamese initiative on bird flu calling for a meeting of Pacific Rim health officials to look at ways of preventing a pandemic.
"We believe that Vietnam will join the WTO in the first half of 2006," Luong told Reuters in an interview. "Vietnam's membership in the WTO will be in the best interests, not only of Vietnam, but of other APEC economies."
Economists and business leaders had said that only a last-minute miracle could have bounced the potential Asian economic tiger into WTO membership this year.
A key stumbling block is that the communist government's economic and legal reforms have not yet reached levels expected by its biggest trading partner, the United States.
The government has expressed concern that if Vietnam does not gain entry by mid-2006, its bid risks losing momentum.
Leaders at the APEC meeting in South Korea's second city of Pusan are expected to issue a statement calling for progress at a WTO conference in Hong Kong next month, where a key issue will be domestic subsidies to protect farmers.
Bird flu
Luong, speaking through an interpreter, said he expected APEC leaders to endorse a Hanoi initiative on bird flu calling for the group's health ministers to meet in Hanoi next year to discuss measures such as vaccine and antiviral production.
"Regional cooperation is needed to assist each other in the provision of equipment and facilities," Luong said.
The H5N1 strain of avian influenza is endemic in poultry in several countries in Asia and has killed 67 people, including 42 in Vietnam, since late 2003.
Luong is looking ahead to 2006, when Vietnam hosts the APEC leaders' meeting.
"We are aware that the infrastructure conditions in Vietnam are not as good as other developed economies in APEC," Luong said.
But his country had been preparing for the event for a long time and had done well in hosting other major international meetings, he said.
Luong declined to speculate on the question asked at all APEC leaders' meetings -- what traditional clothes the leaders will wear for their group photo? "We are still shopping around," he said.
By Jon Herskovitz & Sonya Hepinstall - Reuters - November 18, 2005.
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