SANTIAGO, Chile-The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum will likely undergo a significant change during the second term of U.S. President George W. Bush.

The Bush administration is about to form a new diplomatic team, and one senior Washington official said the president wants to tackle the issue of reconstructing the APEC forum.

Bush did not put much priority on diplomacy with Asian nations in his first term. In fact, he treated trade and investment policies along the same lines as his war against terrorism.

Although a senior Bush administration official noted that Washington's relations with Beijing have never been better, Bush focused not on Asia but terrorism and Iraq in his first term.

His administration also prioritized bilateral diplomacy rather than a multilateral approach, and tended to use free trade agreements as a means of encouraging and rewarding countries cooperating in the U.S.-led war on terror.

APEC was created as a regional forum for discussing economic cooperation and free trade. But the U.S. leadership changed APEC into a framework for countering terrorism following the 9/11 attacks against the United States.

The fact that proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and North Korea's nuclear development program became major topics at the APEC summit shows that the economic forum has turned into a ``security forum.''

Annual APEC meetings have also become venues for bilateral meetings on the sidelines, adding to the ambiguous role of APEC.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard expressed concerns that it is difficult for the APEC forum to attain its objectives because it covers so many agendas.

A senior U.S. official said the Bush administration's Asia policy will be to restore APEC's role as a solid forum for national leaders to get together and discuss specific issues. Washington wants to pay particular attention to China.

Chinese officials have maintained that excessive attention on security topics at APEC forums is inappropriate, and that Taiwan should not be included in such debate on security issues.

Japanese officials noted that Washington and Beijing went to great diplomatic lengths during the Santiago meeting.

The United States made the issues of terrorism and nonproliferation of WMD the major topics during a breakfast meeting of foreign ministers. Taiwan was not represented because Taipei only sent its economics minister.

Beijing also allowed the topic of tighter export controls to be counted as an anti-terrorism issue.

China's role is expected to increase in multilateral diplomacy in Asia. Already, the ``ASEAN plus three'' regional mechanism is expanding the scope of cooperation without the United States.

Washington initially took no heed of the ASEAN plus three relation, viewing it as a meeting with a status below the APEC forum itself.

But the U.S. government now apparently feels the need to engage China in a U.S.-led framework that would include Beijing in debate on economic and security issues.

APEC will likely become the forum for that purpose.

Bush likely intended to keep China in check when he stressed in Chile that the United States is a Pacific nation and that APEC needs more transparency and should tackle such issues as corruption and intellectual property rights.

The big issues at next year's APEC meeting in South Korea will likely include the North Korean nuclear problems, the balance between security and economic issues, Washington's attitude toward unions among East Asian countries and the connection between Washington's strengthening of APEC's role and its diplomacy with Beijing.

Under such circumstances, Japan's strategy involving APEC will likely come under the international spotlight.(IHT/Asahi: November 24,2004)