Concerns Rise Around Obama Trip

NOVEMBER 16, 2009.

Concerns Rise Around Obama Trip

By JONATHAN WEISMAN

SHANGHAI -- President Barack Obama arrived here late Sunday to press China on issues from climate change to economic restructuring, amid rising concerns that his first swing through Asia as president will yield more disappointment than progress on trade, human rights, national security and environmental concerns.

A flurry of actions in Singapore this weekend raised more questions than they resolved on a broad sweep of issues confronting both sides of the Pacific. On Sunday, leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum dropped efforts to reach a binding international climate-change agreement in Copenhagen next month, settling instead for what they called a political framework for future negotiations.

Mr. Obama became the first president to meet with the entire Association of Southeast Asian Nations, including the military junta of Myanmar, and White House officials say he personally demanded the country's leaders release political prisoners, including opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. But Mr. Obama failed to secure any mention of political prisoners in an ASEAN communiqué.

The U.S. and Russia now appear unlikely to complete a nuclear arms reduction accord by Dec. 5, when the current Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty expires. Mr. Obama met for closed-door consultations with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, but National Security Council Russia specialist Michael McFaul said major issues remain, and the two countries are working out a "bridging agreement" to extend previous arms-ratification rules.

On trade, the U.S. president committed this weekend to re-engage the Trans Pacific Partnership, a fledgling free trade alliance in the region. But a presidential shift in tone toward more trade engagement will face its real test Thursday when Mr. Obama visits South Korea to discuss a free trade agreement with that country that remains stuck.

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And on Iran, Messers. Obama and Medvedev were left to warn leaders of the Islamic Republic once again that "time is running out." Iran has yet to agree to a Russian offer to provide nuclear material for research in exchange for the closure of a nuclear reactor that western powers say could be used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.

Half way through his Asian tour, Mr. Obama is confronting the limits of engagement and personal charm.

International efforts to combat climate change took a significant blow when the leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum conceded a binding international treaty won't be reached when the United Nations convenes in Copenhagen in three weeks. Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen flew to Singapore Saturday night to deliver a new, down-sized proposal to lock world leaders into further talks.

"Even if we may not hammer out the last dot's of a legally binding instrument, I do believe a political binding agreement with specific commitment to mitigation and finance provides a strong basis for immediate action in the years to come," Mr. Rasmussen told APEC leaders at a hastily convened meeting organized by Mexican President Felipe Calderón and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd Sunday morning.

The election of Mr. Obama, a believer in strict limits on greenhouse gas emissions, had raised hopes among environmentalists that Copenhagen would produce a tough, binding treaty to follow the Kyoto Accords of 1997. The landslide victory of Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's Democratic Party of Japan brought to power a new government pledging deeper emissions cuts than its predecessor. And Chinese President Hu Jintao proposed in September to adopt what he called "carbon intensity targets," the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere per unit of economic output. Emissions from surging economics like China's would continue to rise but at a slower rate.

But political opposition in the U.S. Congress over Mr. Obama's climate-change proposals and continuing resistance among developing countries to binding emission reduction targets slowed consensus ahead of the Copenhagen summit.

Mr. Rasmussen laid out in some detail his goals for the Copenhagen summit. He said leaders should produce a five- to eight-page text with "precise language" committing developed countries to reductions of emissions thought to be warming the planet, with provisions on adapting to warmer temperatures, financing adaptation and combating climate change in poor countries, and technological development and diffusion. It would include pledges of immediate financing for early action.

"We are not aiming to let anyone off the hook," Mr. Rasmussen told the leaders. "We are trying to create a framework that will allow everybody to commit."

But the leaders didn't say when a final summit would be convened to ratify a real treaty.

"There are two choices that we face, given where things are. One was to have a political declaration to say 'We tried. We didn't achieve an agreement and we'll keep on trying.' and the other was to see if we could reach accord as the Danish prime minister laid out," said Michael Froman, White House deputy national security adviser for international economics..

Mr. Obama, in a speech Sunday, took his appeal for a new world economic order to the leaders of Asia that must help make it happen. He said the United States would strive to consume less, save more and restructure its economy around trade and exports. But he appealed to Asian nations to make their own economies more dependent on domestic consumption that U.S. profligacy.

White House officials say a similar message will be delivered in Shanghai and Beijing, but it is unclear how hard the U.S. president can press Beijing to allow the Chinese yuan to appreciate. At the APEC summit, leaders "until the last moment" tried to secure a commitment to stabilize foreign-exchange markers, according to a top adviser to an APEC head of state. But disagreements between the U.S. and Chinese delegations kept any commitment on currency out of the APEC final statement.

A more valuable yuan would empower Chinese consumers to buy, while making Chinese exports less attractive to U.S. consumers. But Washington cannot afford to anger China, which it needs to float a U.S. budget deficit that reached $176.4 billion in October alone, a monthly record.

Indeed, the Asia trip is exposing the limits of Mr. Obama's policy of engagement. The U.S. president met with ASEAN, declaring that efforts to marginalize the government of Myanmar had failed. Human rights groups had hoped a communiqué out of the meeting would call for the release of Ms. Suu Kyi, who is under house arrest. Instead, it made a cryptic reference to a previous ASEAN foreign ministers communiqué that called for her release. Sunday's statement did say that 2010 elections in Myanmar must be "free, fair, inclusive and transparent."

The failure to single out Ms. Suu Kyi was "another blow" to dissidents who want more pressure on the Myanmar junta, said Soe Aung, a spokesman for the Forum for Democracy in Burma, a Thailand-based organization. "We keep saying again and again that the U.S. should not send a mixed signal to the regime."

A White House official said the president never expected the leaders of Myanmar to accept any mention of the Nobel Laureate opposition leader but did press for a mention of political prisoners.

U.S. officials had taken pains to reduce expectations for the meeting, which was part of a new initiative by the Obama administration to improve its ties with Southeast Asia and increase interaction with the Myanmar government. The U.S. imposes stiff sanctions on the country, also known as Burma. But many analysts view those sanctions as a failure as Myanmar has expanded trade with China and other Asian nations, and U.S. officials now believe they might have more influence over the country's leaders if they talk with them more regularly.

Myanmar's military has controlled the country since 1962, and is accused of widespread human rights violations while overseeing an economy that remains one of the least-developed in Asia. The country's profile has risen over the last year, however, amid reports of growing ties with North Korea. The regime plans to hold elections next year, the first since 1990, in a bid to boost its international reputation. But the U.S. and others contend the results cannot be fair unless Ms. Suu Kyi and her supporters – who won the last vote – are allowed to participate.

—Costas Paris contributed to this article.
Write to Jonathan Weisman at jonathan.weisman@wsj.com

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