I will be travelling to Santiago, Chile, on Thursday 18 November to attend the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders' meeting. The APEC leaders' meeting is an important occasion for Australia, bringing together key nations in the Asia-Pacific region.
My visit will be an opportunity to discuss with regional leaders our shared commitment to protect our people, businesses and communities from terrorism. Continuing terrorist attacks this year, including against the Australian Embassy in Jakarta, demonstrate the need to redouble our efforts to fight terrorism in the region. It is important APEC continues its existing strong work on dealing with the problem of terrorism to prevent it from undermining our communities and our economies.
I will encourage leaders to take advantage of current global economic strength to press ahead with reforms that will increase the resilience of our economies and set the foundation for future economic growth. With this in mind, I will encourage leaders to send a strong message of support for the current WTO Doha round, which offers major gains for both developed and developing countries.
My visit will also be an opportunity to meet the new leaders in our region. I will meet President Yudhoyono to continue discussions initiated during my visit to Indonesia for his inauguration in October. I also look forward to meeting Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi and Singaporean Prime Minister Lee.
I am pleased I will once again have the opportunity to meet President Hu of China to discuss excellent progress on our joint study into a possible Australia China free trade agreement. I will also meet President Roh of Korea (the incoming chairman of APEC), Prime Minister Clark of New Zealand and President Lagos of Chile.
The meeting will also, of course, be the first opportunity for me to see President Bush following his re-election.