beneficial economic integration, simply to deal with a dwindling number of problems, such as the protection of some low-technology sectors of some APEC participants. The seeds of such entrenched problems of protection were into decades ago: never be sensible to transform the style of APEC confrontational negotiations simply to deal with the least efficient, and already rapidly shrinking sectors, of Asia Pacific economies. If negotiations on these outstanding issues can be preventing from upsetting the consensual style of co-operation on other matters, then it may be worth pursuing them under APEC auspices. Otherwise, it would be less risky for the APEC process as a whole to conduct the necessary negotiations in a multilateral setting, Most of the "sensitive" issues likely to be outstanding in ten years time are likely to concern the protection of selected goods or services sectors. They can, therefore, be tackled in the course of multilateral WTO negotiations, in an institution designed specifically for dealing with such "traditional impediments to tradel5l