AUCKLAND. Sept 8: Asia-Pacific economies pursued efforts today to pack a united punch in global trade talks startine in November and to press ahead with their own free-trade goals, reports AFP.

The "millennium round" of trade negotiations starting in Seattle will be a "big opportunity" to set up a strong multilateral trading system and increase world trade, said Chile's foreign minister Jose Gabriel Valdes,

Liberalisation under the World Trade Organisation framework offered the advantage of "clear, homogenous and stable rules," he said on his 'ar- ' rival here for meetings of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum.

"APEC has to strongly support the WTO," the minister said, adding that for developing nations such as Chile, particular interest centred on issues' such as investment and competition policies and anti-dumping regulations.

Critics were warning that free trade risked being slowed by the impact of the Asian financial crisis which broke out in mid-1997 and ravaged some regional economies.

The 21 members of APEC are trying to forge a collective approach to the WTO talks in a bid to stamp their mark on the multilateral trading system into the new millennium.

APEC wants the WTO negotiations to be concluded within three years and the agenda broadened to include liberalisation in industrial products besides agriculture and services.

Until now the WTO agenda has only provided for mandated negotiations on liberalisation of trade in agricultural products and services.

The September 12-13 APEC leaders' summit would try to send a strong message packed with the organisation's collective "political punch" in support of its goals, said Thai senior official Kobsak Chutikul.

Kobsak, director-general of

economics affairs at the Thai ministry of foreign affairs, acknowledged APEC faced the risk of slowing down trade liberalisation as Its economies recovered from crisis.

APEC has set itself the goal of tearing down trade and investment barriers for developed members by 2010 and developing ones by 2020, but many governments have come under Eressure to protect industries urLing from the crisis.

"People throughout the APEC region will be substantially better off if APEC members continue to work towards free trade in line with APEC targets." APEC Economic Committee Chairman Mitsuru Taniuchi told reporters.

APEC measures to tear down trade barriers and red tape hampering cross-border business had expanded the region's annual income by 75 billion dollars or 0.4 per cent of its total GDP, the committee said in a report released Wednesday.

Meanwhile, another report

says: The Asia-Pacific will enjoy higher growth this year as financial crisis recedes but a sustained recovery depends on the determined pursuit of financial and corporate reform, a key report said yesterday.

The 1999 APEC Economic Outlook said the gross domestic froduct of the 21 -member Asia-acific Economic Cooperation forum was expected to grow 2.9 per cent in 1999, based on forecasts by member governments.

In 1998, APEC economies averaged 1.9 per cent growth, the worst performance of the current decade, as they reeled under the effects of a regional financial crisis that erupted in Thailand in July 1997.

"In 1999 the whole world, and particularly the APEC economies, will continue to experience the impact of the economic and financial crisis, which mainly expressed itself through a contraction or reduction of GDP growth rates in most of the member economies in 1998," said the report.