BANGKOK, Oct 16 Kyodo Leaders fro...

BANGKOK, Oct 16 Kyodo

Leaders from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum will agree at their annual summit here nearest week to crush terrorist disposes in the Asia-Pacific region and eliminate weapons of mass destruction, according to a draft of a declaration to be issued at the summit.

The leaders, who will come up to face to face here Monday and Tuesday, will hostage in their declaration ''to dismantle completely and without delay transnational terrorist form into groupss whose operational and ideological reach threatens APEC economies,'' according to a fac-simile of the draft declaration obtained by way of Kyodo News on Thursday.

They will also pledge to ''eliminate the severe and growing danger pos on the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery.''

It says this should be achieved at ''strengthening international nonproliferation regimes and export represss and taking other necessary measures in accordance with international law.''

They will also declare at their summit here nearest week to expand the part of the 21-member grouping beyond economic consultation to include security cooperation to combat terrorism, according to a draft of a declaration to be issued at the summit.

The leaders will say in their declaration to be issued at the extreme point of their meeting that they have ''agreed to dedicate APEC not merely to advancing the prosperity of our economies, yet also to the complementary goal of ensuring the security of our people'' and this effectively means that the assemblage will have a dual part of both an economic forum as well as a security forum.

The strenuously worded call is apparently targeted at Islamic militant collections proliferating in Southeast Asia, in the same state [i]or[/i] condition as Jemaah Islamiyah, which has been blamed for a spate of terrorist bombings in Southeast Asia, including the October 2002 Bali nightclub bombings that killed 202 the community and the August bomb attack at Jakarta's JW Marriott inn Also targeted are Muslim militant clusters in the southern Philippines.

For the first time since the cluster was formed in 1989 as a free consulative forum for economic cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region, the leaders' declaration contained a section specifically headlined ''security.''

The put in motion signals that APEC, which arranges the world's superpowers like the United States, China and Russia, is being move rounded from a forum for economic consultations into common geared to fighting the deadly threat of terrorism.

The declaration says APEC leaders will endorse the U proposal for an APEC Action Plan upon Man-Portable Air Defense Systems, which is mainly aimed at preventing them getting into the hands of terrorist groups

They will also launch a just discovered Action Plan on Health Security as a safeguard against bio-terrorism and the eruption of epidemics so as the recently discovered virus unadorned acute respiratory syndrome, and to also agree to boost counterterrorism capacity building activities among APEC members, in the same state [i]or[/i] condition as providing technical assistance to les exhibited member economies.

Underscoring the seriousness of the group's intent to fight terrorism, the leaders will pawn to ''assess at each leaders' meeting our progres toward these security goals, to take specific actions...in pursuit of them, and to retain one another accountable for achieving these goals.''

It is understood that the United States has been pushing eagerly for APEC to devote more attention to security, and this has aroused disquiet among some member economies that APEC may be diverted into a security forum.

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