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Squabbles continue over APEC's shape

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THE four-year old Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC), like all the best economy-focused ideas, has been turned into a political football.

The early days of this week's conference in Bali were marked by calls for the grouping to be given more muscle, institutionalised and transformed into a community-status forum.

But towards the end the cracks were starting to show: clawing diplomats and academics exposed a counter-movement that could see APEC-the-giant split into parochial factions.

The desire, voiced most strongly by Malaysia, to put down stronger roots in the sub-groupings prompted warnings from delegates that the bigger APEC could be subsumed.

Donald Emmerson, professor of political science at Wisconsin-Madison University in the US, warned that a caucus of the sort proposed by Malaysia and operating on the basis of majority voting could in principle dictate all the outcomes of the bigger body.

He said: ''In traditional United Nations terms - one country, one vote - the EAEC [East Asian Economic Caucus] has the power to render APEC meaningless.

''With nearly three fourths of APEC members inside it, perhaps the EAEC should be renamed the EAOM: East Asian Overwhelming Majority.

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