CANBERRA, Aug 27 – The door should be open for China to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade talks, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said in a speech on foreign policy during the federal election campaign Tuesday.
The 18th round of TPP negotiations were held in Malaysia four weeks ago with Japan’s entry taking the number of participants to 12 including Australia, Xinhua news agency reported.
“I will urge all governments who are party to the TPP to leave the door open to China in the future. This would be good for everybody,” Rudd said at the Lowy Institute in Sydney.
The world’s second largest economy, China, is not a part of the TPP — which some politicians and commentators say is a major flaw of the trade negotiations, analysis from the Australian Associated Press (AAP) said Tuesday.
And at the Asia Pacific level, Rudd called for the East Asia Summit to include a new “regional disputes mechanism” in his speech.
“We must work with others in the region to build collectively a shared political, economic and security agenda — a sense of common security across our wider region,” he said.
Rudd also said it had been a “good year” for Australia, which has a seat on the G20 and will take over the chair of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) this weekend.
He believes the UNSC role gives Australia “a direct say on how the world responds to key challenges to the world’s peace and security.”
In his speech, Rudd also called the use of chemical weapons in Syria a “fundamental assault on all international norms.”
– BERNAMA
