APEC leaders promise swift economic action

By Chisa Fujioka and Oleg Shchedrov

LIMA (Reuters) - The United States, China, Japan and 18 other economies in Asia and the Americas pledged quick and decisive action on Sunday to prevent a severe global economic downturn.

With recession gripping parts of the world and financial markets in chaos, leaders at the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, or APEC, said the slowdown is "one of the most serious economic challenges we have ever faced."

They said free trade and higher government spending were key to resolving the crisis and supported a big push to revive long-stalled global trade talks by seeking agreements on contentious farming and manufactured goods.

The leaders promised to "take all necessary economic and financial measures to resolve this crisis."

Their declaration at the end of a two-day summit in Peru echoed the measures called for by the "Group of 20" major economies at a meeting in Washington a week earlier, and widened the support for drastic action to stimulate lending and spending.

APEC members account for more than half of the world's economic output and also include Canada, Indonesia, Mexico, Chile, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and Hong Kong. Nine of them belong to the G20.

They pledged at the summit to work together to ease the turmoil, agreed not to adopt new trade barriers for a year and called for better regulation of the financial industry.

They also supported overhauls of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank at a time when more countries need emergency bailouts to avert economic disaster.

"The global political and economic architecture is undergoing the deepest and most complicated changes since the Cold War," Chinese President Hu Jintao told Russia's Dmitry Medvedev at the summit.

Japan reiterated an offer of $100 billion in funding for the IMF, but its peers did not follow the example.

TRADE DEADLOCK

APEC, which groups some of the most open economies in the world, warned that countries should not be tempted to use protectionist measures even if job losses mount.

"We are convinced that we can overcome this crisis in a period of 18 months," the leaders said at the summit.

But seven years of global trade negotiations have been hampered by disputes between the United States, China, India and other major players, and it is not clear what concessions they are prepared to make now.

U.S. President George W. Bush, on his last scheduled international trip before leaving office in January, held bilateral meetings with the leaders of China, Japan and Russia during the summit.