For Bush, Asia Pacific Summit Will be More Than a Swan Song

Thursday, November 20, 2008
By Patrick Goodenough, International Editor

President Bush and then-Russian President Vladimir Putin at Bush’s first APEC summit, in Shanghai on Oct. 21, 2001. APEC leaders traditionally make an appearance in local costume (Photo: Russian Presidential Press and Information Office)(CNSNews.com) – When President Bush looks around the room at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Peru this weekend, he will see a very different group of leaders than the one he first joined for the forum’s annual gathering in 2001.

Only three of the 21 APEC leaders who will be in Lima were at his first summit, in Shanghai. Apart from Bush himself, they are Philippine President Gloria Arroyo, who took office on the same day as her American counterpart in January 2001, and the Sultan of Brunei, Hassanal Bolkiah, who has been in power since 1968.

All the other members of APEC, which groups nations along both edges of the Pacific Ocean, have changed hands at least once – in Japan’s case, three times – since 2001.

The Shanghai summit was dominated by al-Qaeda’s attacks on the U.S. one month earlier, and in condemning it, APEC leaders issued the first key political statement in the economic forum’s then 12-year old history.

Subsequent summits – in Mexico (2002), Thailand (2003), Chile (2004), South Korea (2005), Vietnam (2006) and Australia (2007) – have continued to focus strongly on terrorism and security, along with other “politicalâ€