The Australian opposition called on Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on Wednesday to abandon his "poorly thought out" plan to establish a new Asia-Pacific grouping modeled on the European Union (EU).
"I think he (Rudd) should drop it, because clearly it was poorly thought out, he hadn't consulted in relation to making that announcement, and it was received very coolly," Coalition foreign affairs spokeswoman Helen Coonan said.
"It seems that those of our neighbors in the Asia Pacific are certainly under whelmed by the proposal," she said.
"And in fact what it shows is that Mr. Rudd was really just keen to grab a headline, float an idea, without having any clear idea about how it would be implemented, and how it would play," she added.
Former diplomat Richard Woolcott, appointed by Rudd as special envoy to look into the plan, is reportedly set to tell Rudd there is little appetite in the region for a new multilateral organization.
Woolcott told local media on Tuesday that the nations he'd spoken to favoured an expansion of existing regional institutions, such as the APEC, instead of setting up a new union.
Source: Xinhua
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