From: clarinews@clarinet.com
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Message-id: <australia-keatingU2A7910pe@clarinet.com>
Subject: Australia proposes regular Asia-Pacific summits
Keywords: international, non-usa government, government, political parties,
	politics
Date: Tue, 7 Apr 92 18:18:00 PDT
Location: australia
ACategory: international
Slugword: australia-keating
Priority: regular
Format: regular
ANPA: Wc: 509; Id: z7062; Sel: auigf; Adate: 4-7-910ped
Codes: yigfrau., yipprxx.

	SYDNEY, Australia (UPI) -- Prime Minister Paul Keating has called for
regular meetings of Asia-Pacific leaders and the United States aimed at
expanding regional co-operation.
	In his first major foreign policy speech, Keating said he had raised
the idea with U.S. President George Bush on his recent visit to
Australia.
	Keating said such consultations were ``conspicuously absent in a
region whose weight in global affairs was steadfastly increasing.''
	Analysts said it was understood the summits would take place every
two or three years and would match similar consultations held in Europe
and the Americas.
	Keating said he favored a mechanism built around the Asia-Pacific
Economic Co-operation (APEC) forum, which covered all of the countries
involved.
	He said the summit could also provide an option for a regional
trading block should global negotiations on trade and tariffs break
down.
	Keating did not indicate Bush's reaction to his proposal, which
analysts said he would also discuss with Indonesia's President Surhato
when he visits Indonesia for the first time later this month.
	They said there could also be complications with the Association of
South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) which had already expressed
reservations over APEC diluting its traditional leading regional role.
	Analysts described the speech, delivered to the Asia-Australia
Institute in Sydney, as part of Keating's strategy to bring Australia
closer to Asia and away from traditional Britain.
	Keating referred to ``culutral reform'' to recognize that Asia is
where Australia's future lies.
	``We can and must go there and this course we are on is irreversible,
'' he said.
	Keating defended and repeated his criticism of the ``torpor'' of
Australia, particularly under the prime ministership of Conservative Sir
Robert Menzies in the 1940's and 50's and the wartime priorities of
British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill.
	He said Menzies claimed Australia had a ``blood brother''
relationship with Britain and that Churchill had replied with ``the
abject disaster of Singapore and Malaya and in the attempt to prevent
the return of Australian troops from the Middle East to defend Australia
-- a country which lost 60,000 under the Union Jack (British) flag in
World War II.''
	``Nothing I say tonight and nothing I have said in recent weeks can
reasonably be interpreted as criticism of the British people and least
of all those men and women who fought suffered and died in the war
against Japan and Germany,'' Keating said.
	``My criticism is directed at those Australians -- or more accurately
the Australian attitude -- which still cannot separate our interests, our
history or our future, from the interests of Britain,'' he said.
	Keating also called for a continued U.S. strategic presence in the
western Pacific, with a close security relationship between the U.S. and
Japan ``especially important.''
	He said Japan should also adopt a more active international role.
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