Bush in Vietnam as APEC tackles trade, North Korea

HANOI, Nov 18, 2006 (AFP) - US President George W. Bush today kept the pressure on North Korea as he held a flurry of bilateral talks with key world leaders before heading into an Asia-Pacific summit focused on free trade. Bush, China's Hu Jintao, Russia's Vladimir Putin and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe were to convene here this afternoon with their Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) counterparts for a weekend diplomatic pow-wow.

Leaders at the forum, launched in 1989 to discuss trade and economic issues, were expected to try breathing new life into stalled World Trade Organization (WTO) talks on scrapping barriers to global commerce. But the 21 members of the Pacific Rim forum also were to tackle a raft of issues affecting the region, from the North Korean nuclear crisis to counter-terrorism efforts to bird flu.

Vietnam has pulled out all stops for the APEC gathering, building a massive 270-million-dollar convention center on the edge of Hanoi for the occasion and sending thousands of police into the streets to maintain order. The communist country, East Asia's fastest-growing economy after China, wants to impress the international community as it prepares to join the WTO before year's end, and attract investors looking for the next Asian hotspot.

But dissidents and human rights groups charged the country's one-party regime had used intimidation and violence to clamp down on the pro-democracy movement in the lead-up to the APEC gathering. Before the formal start of the summit, all eyes were on Bush, who is making only the second visit by a US president to Vietnam since the fall of Saigon in 1975, following a 2000 trip by predecessor Bill Clinton.

He started his day at a breakfast meeting with South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun and held his first one-on-one meeting with Abe over lunch -- evidence that North Korea is at the top of his agenda. Bush emphasized the US-South Korean “desire to effectively enforce the will of the world”, but Roh left unclear whether Seoul would fully comply with international efforts to intercept cargo ships coming in and out of the North.

He said although Seoul was “not taking part in the full scope” of the US-led Proliferation Security Initiative, it would “fully cooperate in preventing WMD (weapons of mass destruction) materiel transfer in the northeast Asia region.” Separately, Abe -- attending his first major international summit -- met with Hu on both North Korea and improving ties strained by wartime history.

“We need both dialogue and pressure” with respect to Pyongyang, Abe told Hu, according to a Japanese official. The United States, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea are involved in six-party disarmament talks with Pyongyang, aimed at convincing the reclusive Stalinist regime to abandon its nuclear ambitions.

Pyongyang sparked international anger in July when it test-fired seven ballistic missiles and then stunned the world last month with its first atom bomb test, which triggered UN sanctions. The North walked out of the six-way negotiations a year ago over US efforts to curb its access to the international banking system, but agreed late last month to return to the table, provided the financial sanctions were discussed.