APEC eyes reviving eminent persons group.

AUCKLAND, Sept. 7 Kyodo

The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum is eyeing the revival of an eminent persons' group to study the grouping's future direction, officials said Tuesday.

The move is a response to criticism of APEC's slowness to respond to the Asian financial crisis and to move forward on trade liberalization, they said.

Officials from Asian members of APEC said foreign and trade ministers meeting this week are likely to endorse the restoration of the APEC Eminent Persons Group (EPG) to draw up a vision paper that will review APEC's performance over the last 10 years as well as chart the future direction of the grouping over the next decade, they said.

APEC was established in 1989 and marks its 10th anniversary this year.

Philippine Foreign Undersecretary Rosario Manalo said the vision paper is likely to be submitted at next year's APEC summit in Brunei.

Other officials said it was not yet clear whether the members of the eminent persons' group will be the same as when it was created in 1992 to formulate APEC's guiding principles and goals. That group was disbanded in 1995.

Discussions on reconvening the eminent persons' group started after disappointments were aired over the failure of APEC to agree on a plan for early removal of tariffs in eight key sectors, an official from a developed economy said.

APEC instead referred those issues to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for solution and trade ministers in June also passed on tariff issues on the six remaining sectors to the WTO.

Critics saw this as a failure and said APEC no longer has a meaningful role other than as a cheerleader or advisory council of the WTO.

Senior APEC officials gathered in Auckland on Tuesday to prepare for a meeting of the group's foreign and trade ministers Thursday and Friday and an APEC summit Sunday and Monday