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TRADE WARS
Pakistan, China launch new trade route
by Staff Writers
Gwadar, Pakistan (AFP) Nov 13, 2016


Kerry hopes to revive TPP trade deal
Wellington (AFP) Nov 13, 2016 - US Secretary of State John Kerry refused to call last rites on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Sunday, expressing hope President-elect Donald Trump will drop his opposition to the contentious free trade deal.

The 12-nation TPP became a hot-button issue during the US election campaign, with critics including Trump saying it would cost American jobs.

Kerry said international trade was critical to US interests and the TPP could help grow the economy.

"I think as people examine it and begin to get beyond the campaign and begin to dig into it, my hope is it can summon the support that it needs," he told reporters during a trip to New Zealand.

The TPP includes a dozen Asia-Pacific nations that together account for 40 percent of the global economy.

They are the United States, Japan, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.

It has been signed but is yet to be ratified by lawmakers in the US.

Kerry said he and President Barack Obama remained "deeply committed" to the deal but would not try to push it through in the so-called "lame duck" legislative session before Trump takes over.

"The fact that it may not be taken up in the lame duck session isn't indicative of where the country may go, that's for sure," he said.

"I believe there'll be a robust debate about it and there's enough benefit in it for everybody that ultimately people will come to see this as a different kind of agreement."

Kerry also denied that the TPP was intended to create an economic bulwark against China's rise in the Asia-Pacific.

"It's not about China," he said. "The United States welcomes the peaceful rise of a great nation like China, we've said that directly to President Xi (Jinping).

"We're not looking for competition or conflict, we're looking for cooperation."

Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif Sunday inaugurated a trade route linking southwestern Gwadar port to the Chinese city of Kashgar as part of a joint multi-billion-dollar project to jumpstart economic growth in the South Asian country.

The Cosco Wellington, a ship berthed at the deep-sea port in Balochistan province, was loaded with over 150 containers -- the first consignment under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor announced in 2014, which aims to link the Asian superpower's Xinjiang region with the Arabian Sea.

The $46 billion project is an extension of China's "One Belt, One Road" initiative and encompasses a series of infrastructure, power and transport upgrades that Islamabad hopes will kickstart its long-underperforming economy.

"The participants of the pilot convoy who have made it to Gwadar are the harbingers of development and progress, that this region is to see soon," Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif told audience members at a ceremony that was also attended by powerful army chief Raheel Sharif and senior Chinese officials.

"Their faces gleam with the beam of prosperity that CPEC will bring about in the years to come," he said, calling the first shipment a "watershed event".

Pakistan recorded a 4.7 percent growth in gross domestic product (GDP) for the fiscal year that ended in June 2016, and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has set an ambitious target of 5.7 percent for the current year.

With its dusty moonscape and shining new port, officials have repeatedly suggested the city of Gwadar is another Dubai in the making.

But the mineral-rich province in which it is located is beset by violence from Islamist groups as well as insurgents seeking a greater share of the region's natural resources and secession from Pakistan.

Security problems have mired CPEC in the past with numerous attacks by separatists, but China has said it is confident the Pakistani military is in control.

On Saturday, at least 52 people were killed and dozens of others wounded in a massive suicide attack at a shrine of the Sufi saint Shah Noorani, some 750 kilometres (460 miles) south of Quetta, the provincial capital of Balochistan province.

The assault was the second claimed by the Islamic State group in the province in as many months, in what some analysts see as a a sign of its growing regional influence.


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