FEW people living in or visiting Seattle this week can have escaped hearing of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) meeting. The acronym is emblazoned across everything from the 605-foot Space Needle to the more humble downtown coffee of the month, the APEC latte.
But ask anyone on the street what the initials mean, and you will hear many different answers. Ask any of the senior officials attending the closed-door meetings inside the APEC nerve centre, and the outcome will be the same: different people, different answers.
The 15 disparate economies - among them chrysalis China, developing Malaysia, growing Hong Kong and over-the-hill America - were never all going to want the same thing from a forum that attempted to serve everyone's best interests.
Clashes were on the cards before the eminent persons' group - the think-tank set up to act as advisory panel to APEC - put forward its controversial proposals to transform it into a community and work towards the creation of a free-trade zone.
Ambassador William Bodde, executive director of the APEC secretariat, says there have always been strains about the group's future direction.
''Certainly Australia has always taken an assertive line on that. We have always had those wanting to push APEC further and faster - Australia, the US, Korea and Singapore,'' he said.