Pacific Rim nations began negotiating a contested declaration on climate change Tuesday as host Australia sought to rally support, with a warning that future economic well-being depended on curbing global warming, according to AP. Drafting was moving into high gear before the 21 APEC leaders gathered at Sydney's Opera House for a weekend summit. U.S. President George W. Bush arrived late Tuesday with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other officials, who headed by motorcade toward a city hotel that lies within a 2.8-meter (10-ft.) security fence that has been erected to guard against protests planned for later in the week. Chinese President Hu Jintao went to Canberra, the capital, after visiting mining companies in western Australia that are supplying China's economic boom. Their anticipated arrival started the first of an expected series of protests by groups outraged at APEC's pro-business agenda and by the Iraq war _ and Australia's backing of the U.S. in it. The demonstration, outside Sydney's main railway station, fizzled an hour after it started with police in numbers overwhelming fewer than 100 demonstrators. Earlier in a Sydney park, about two dozen supporters of the Falun Gong spiritual movement, which is banned in China as an evil cult, handed out flyers and held up a banner that read, «APEC Nations: Please Act to Stop the Persecution of Falun Gong in China.» This year's focus on climate change has moved APEC, which operates by consensus and normally sticks to incremental economic issues, into strangely controversial terrain. Downer, the foreign minister, said APEC countries recognized that sustaining economic growth meant dealing with terrorism, epidemics, natural disasters and other issues beyond business and finance.
