The 10th annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders summit has come and gone, leaving the usual questions in its wake. Perennial doubts about the forum's relevance have been highlighted following the collapse of the last round of world trade negotiations. APEC members acknowledged this year's exigency by endorsing the resumption of the global talks. But that is not enough to justify the APEC spectacular: Concrete measures should be the benchmark for the forum. By that yardstick, APEC's utility is open to challenge.
Founded 15 years ago, APEC has, on paper, made remarkable progress. At the 1994 summit, held in Bogor, Indonesia, members agreed to set target dates for aggressive trade liberalization. Developed countries would eliminate trade barriers by 2010, and developing nations a decade later. The 1995 Osaka summit provided specific action plans to meet those goals.
Such agreement was remarkable, given the diversity of the organization's members. The 21 APEC nations are socialist, capitalist and mixes of the two, and include the richest nations in the world and some of the poorest, the largest countries on the planet and some of the smallest.