Tony Abbott with APEC Leaders including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping for the family photo at the Water Cube in Beijing. Source: Supplied
TONY Abbott has raised gaining access to the MH17 site with Russia president Vladimir Putin in a brief conversation at a gala APEC dinner last night.
The Prime Minister and the Russian President talked briefly at the gala event but are set to have another meeting today at the APEC leaders’s retreat.
The move would take the heat out of the Australia Russia relationship ahead of the G20 in Brisbane this weekend
This morning Mr Abbott attended a Remembrance Day ceremony at the Australian embassy with New Zealand Prime Minister John Key before leaving Beijing to attend the formal sessions of APEC today at the Yangqi Lake resort.
Chinese president Xi Jinping will start the first session titled Advancing Regional Economic Integration.
President Xi Jinping will start the session with an introduction and invite selected leaders to provide opening comments.
China has been pushing to add impetus to APEC’s long-term goal of relating a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific.
Mr Abbott will today highlight linkages between APEC and G20 priorities, promote Australia’s trade and economic interests — including support for the multilateral trading system and free trade agreements.
The leaders are planning a working lunch on closer economic ties based on a Chinese blueprint.
Targets in the blueprint of particular interest to Australia including creating dedicated public private partnerships centres in each APEC economy, boosting trade facilitation systems in each economy by 2020 and increasing the number of APEC business travel card holders.
The blueprint also calls for increasing the number of student exchanges to developing economies and achieving 800 million APEC tourism arrivals by 2025.
source: theaustralian.com.au
STUDIO 3 NEWCASTLE AUSTRALIA 