Australia Min: Don’t expect Rio issue to hurt China FTA
Dow Jones | July 20, 2009
Australia Min:Don’t Expect Rio Issue To Hurt China FTA
By P.R. Venkat, Dow Jones Newswires
SINGAPORE -(Dow Jones)- Australia’s trade minister said Monday he doesn’t expect the ongoing detention of an Australian employee of Rio Tinto PLC (RTP) to have lasting implications for economic relations between Australia and China.
"I don’t believe - particularly if this case is handled properly - it will have an impact on those relations," Trade Minister Simon Crean told reporters in Singapore.
"But I think it is important for the Chinese government to understand better the concerns that we have about the circumstances surrounding not just Hu’s detention, but the lack of details."
He also said the matter shouldn’t impede progress toward a free-trade agreement between the two countries.
"No, I don’t believe that this will have an impact on the progress of the free-trade agreement."
On July 5, China detained Stern Hu and three Chinese colleagues at Rio Tinto, alleging they had used bribery to obtain state secrets, damaging China’s " economic security." Rio Tinto has denied the allegations.
"We don’t know what the charges are because the charges haven’t been laid. We are asking the Chinese government and the authorities to give us more and better particulars and to do it expeditiously," Crean said.
Crean, who is in Singapore for a meeting of Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) trade ministers, said he will meet his Chinese counterpart, Chen Deming, without giving specifics.
"I will have a lot of discussions during the course of the next few days ... and raise a number of issues," he said.
Crean also said talks with China over a potential free-trade agreement aren’t progressing as swiftly as Australia would like, but his government is engaging China to explore commercial opportunities.
"The interdependency between the two economies is now huge on both the trade flows as well as investment flows. What we are trying to do of course is to give greater clarity to the nature of that economic relationship and that’s why we are pursuing an FTA with them."
