(Corrects paragraph nine to say "among nine nations", not "among eight nations")
By Linda Sieg
YOKOHAMA, Japan, Nov 11 (Reuters) - Asia-Pacific trade and foreign ministers wrap up talks on Thursday, expected to promise to avoid protectionism and work toward creating a vast free trade area in the world's fastest growing economic region.
But the meeting of ministers of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum is overshadowed by a Group of 20 summit of major economies in neighbouring South Korea where deep divisions have emerged over currencies, monetary policy and global trade imbalances.
Nine of APEC's members are also in the G20, including the world's biggest economies -- China, Japan and the United States. APEC leaders meet in Yokohama at the weekend, immediately after the Seoul G20 summit.
On Wednesday, the APEC ministers agreed to avoid taking any new protectionist measures for the next three years, and urged a conclusion of the Doha round of trade liberalisation talks in 2011, Japanese officials said.
The ministers said they would also build on the 43 bilateral and mini-free trade pacts with each other to create to free a trade area in the region, home to 40 percent of the world's population and 53 percent of global economic output.
Businesses have long urged a single pact for the Pacific rim to simplify a plethora of standards and rules.
The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) -- most of whom are APEC members -- has its own free trade area and is building an EU-style economic community.
ASEAN also has various pacts with APEC members China, Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.
Those agreements, and a U.S.-led one called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) that is being negotiated among nine nations, will be the main building blocks of the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP).
Host Japan has said it wants to start talks with other countries on the TPP, but the government has run into fierce opposition from the politically powerful farm lobby which worries that the agricultural sector could be swept aside if it has to face open competition.
An Asia-Pacific free trade area would link the world's top economies with some of its fastest-growing ones such as Indonesia, Thailand and Mexico.
Despite the expected warm words on free trade, regional security rivalries as the region adjusts to an increasingly assertive China are simmering in the background.
The security tensions could spill over into trade and investment, while rivalry over resources from oil and gas to rare earth metals risks fuelling strategic conflicts in turn.
Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan, his ratings tumbling over his handling of a row with China, is hoping to meet Chinese President Hu Jintao on the sidelines of a Nov. 13-14 APEC summit in Yokohama, south of Tokyo.
Sino-Japanese relations took a sharp dive due to a feud over claims to isles in the East China Sea near potentially huge maritime gas and oil reserves.
Japan's ties with Russia also chilled after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visited part of an island chain north of Japan claimed by both countries.
Washington's ties with Asia are also facing scrutiny as U.S. President Barack Obama, who will arrive in Yokohama following the G20 summit, seeks to boost exports and promote domestic jobs in the wake of his Democratic Party's devastating election defeat.
(Editing by Jonathan Thatcher)