.gif)
Pacific trade ministers have agreed to continue talks on a free trade agreement for the region (PACER-Plus) after the conclusion of the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting in Cairns in August 2009.
And the ministers of the Forum countries, who met in Samoa this week, have also backed the establishment of the Office of Chief Trade Adviser (OCTA) to be funded by Australia and New Zealand.
The OCTA is to be established initially as a special unit of the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat (PIFS) prior to the establishment of the permanent office in Vanuatu.
The Forum Trade Ministers expect to meet again in the Federated States of Micronesia not later than November 2009 to develop a framework for the PACER-Plus negotiations.
The framework would include issues of timelines within which the negotiations are to be completed.
The trade talks, which exclude Fiji as a result of the 2006 coup, has come under fire from more than 30 civil society groups from the Pacific, New Zealand and Australia.
The groups have been critical of moves by Australia and New Zealand.
Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG) coordinator Maureen Penjueli said Australia and New Zealand were demanding negotiations be fast-tracked.
“The Pacific's draft roadmap said negotiations might begin in 2013, and now Pacific Ministers are being told to launch negotiations this year,” Penjueli said.
Professor Jane Kelsey, a New Zealand law professor, added that “any decision to launch the PACER Plus negotiations in the absence of Fiji would not be lawful”.
