Australia snubs South Pacific forum

Australian leader John Howard, left, has urged Japan's Koizumi to push ahead with economic reform

By CNN's Grant Holloway and wires

TOKYO, Japan (CNN) -- Australian Prime Minister John Howard has upset his South Pacific neighbors by choosing to meet new Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri rather than attend the South Pacific Forum.

It is the third forum in six years that Howard has missed, raising concerns that Australia is downgrading its commitment to the Pacific region. Australia's Minister for Defense, Peter Reith, will attend in Howard's place.

Howard will meet Megawati on August 12 and follows a visit to Australia by her ousted predecessor Abdurrahman Wahid in June this year.

Relations between the Australia and Indonesia have often been turbulent.

After a period of goodwill engendered by close ties between former Australian prime minister Paul Keating and former Indonesian president Suharto in the mid 1990s, relations hit an all-time low in 1999 when Australian soldiers led a United Nations peacekeeping mission to East Timor after the territory voted for independence from Jakarta.

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"I think it's a very important signal that both the President of Indonesia and the Prime Minister of Australia are looking very much to the future," Howard said.

But the Jakarta trip means Howard will not attend the Pacific meeting scheduled to be held on the tiny Pacific island of Nauru on August 16.

Exacerbating the perceived snub is the fact that this year's forum will be attended by independence activists from the Indonesian province of Irian Jaya, which lies immediately to Australia's north.

The East Timor situation aside, the Australian government has been highly supportive of Indonesia maintaining its existing borders and has opposed any independence moves for Irian Jaya.

Irian Jaya shares the island of New Guinea with Papua New Guinea which was an Australian protectorate until the mid 1970s.

Pacific nations -- many of whom feel particularly threatened by rising sea levels -- are also distressed by Australia's reluctance to sign off on the Kyoto protocol on Greenhouse gas emissions.

Still committed to Kyoto

But Howard, who met Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in Tokyo Friday, maintains the protocol will be ineffective without the participation of the United States and developing countries.

Japan's Kyodo news agency reports Friday that Koizumi and Howard have agreed to continue cooperation in efforts to bring the U.S. back into the Kyoto protocol.

Koizumi told Howard that while Japan is committed to the goal of putting the Kyoto pact into effect in 2002, it still wants Washington to reverse its stance and rejoin the agreement.

Howard said Australia held a similar view, adding that without the participation of the U.S. and developing nations, the world cannot create an effective framework to combat global warming.

Opening up trade the key goal

Washington has rejected the pact, which requires industrial countries to curb emissions of heat-trapping gases under a set of binding targets, on the grounds it would hurt the U.S. economy and because it exempts developing countries from duties.

Kyodo quotes a Japanese government offical as saying the two leaders also agreed to work jointly toward the early launch of a new round of negotiations under the World Trade Organization.

Japan is Australia's largest economic partner with two-way trade estimated at more than $20 billion a year.

Australia sells commodities such as coal, liquefied natural gas and beef to Japan while Japan sells cars and technology to Australia and nearly 750,000 Japanese tourists take in the sights of the southern continent annually.

Howard said earlier Friday that both Australia and Japan had an interest in further opening up world trade.

"Neither of us has an interest in seeing the world retreat into higher protection and it is important that both of us work to achieve a new World Trade Organization round when that organization next meets," he said.