DENPASAR (Bali, Indonesia), October 8 (Itar-Tass) - Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday will take part in the closing session of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum’s summit, which is underway on the Indonesian island of Bali.
The main issue of the plenary session will be interconnectedness. “Russia is interested in collaboration with partners in the Asia-Pacific Region (APR) to improve transport, energy and telecommunications infrastructure, to harmonize the legal systems, facilitate trade and tourism exchanges,” Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov said earlier.
The APEC leaders’ working lunch will complete the summit. As a rule, the heads of state and government discuss at such meetings the international situation and regional conflicts. In this connection, it can be assumed that they will pay attention to such an important issue as the Syrian settlement. “They will discuss the development of the agreements and prospects for joint work on this dossier,” Ushakov suggested earlier. The RF presidential aide recalled that the Syrian problem has been raised at all the recent APEC summits. “As for St. Petersburg (the G20 Summit), then the acute Syrian issue did not impede a very thorough discussion of all the items on the agenda, and it was not discussed at the official working sessions, but was discussed during a working lunch,” he said. “The same will be done here. I hope that the agenda items, the issues that had been specially prepared and that need to be discussed will be considered at the official working sessions, and the Syrian issues will be discussed on the sidelines, probably at a working breakfast and during informal communication of the leaders.”
After the leaders’ consultations, the ceremony of making public the final documents - the Declaration of the APEC economies’ leaders and the leaders’ Statement in support of a multilateral trade system, will be held.
After the summit, Putin will sum it up its results in a conversation with reporters. After that, his visit to Indonesia will be completed.
Indonesia took over the APEC presidency from Russia. “Priorities of Indonesia's presidency are to develop the initiatives of Russia's presidency in 2012 and are in many respects aimed at implementing the decisions made at the summit in Vladivostok,” the Russian presidential aide pointed out. “Under the motto ‘Stable APR - the Engine for Global Growth’, the Indonesians have combined the tasks of accelerating the attainment of the Bogor Goals, and ensuring a sustainable growth on a fair basis and deepening interrelatedness throughout the APEC space,’ he added. The next APEC summit will be held in China in 2014.
APEC forum participants are 21 countries and territories of the Asia-Pacific Region: Australia, Brunei, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Canada, China, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Russia, Singapore, the United States, Thailand, Taiwan, the Philippines, Chile and Japan.
The APEC economies, representing about 40 percent of the world’s population, account for 57 percent of the world’s GDP, 48 percent of international trade turnover. Consensus in decision making and voluntariness in implementing decisions are the basic principles for APEC activities.