By David Alexander
WASHINGTON, Nov 21 (Reuters) - George W. Bush makes his last scheduled trip abroad as U.S. president on Friday, heading to an Asia-Pacific summit where he will seek support for global financial reform and hold talks on ending North Korea's nuclear program.
Experts said the meeting of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Lima, Peru, was unlikely to produce any major breakthroughs, but U.S. officials rejected characterization of the session as a swan song for a lame-duck president with low approval ratings.
"This is a serious meeting," said Daniel Price, Bush's adviser on international economic affairs, noting that the president's long advocacy of free trade and open markets meshed well with APEC's core mission. "I don't think this is a farewell ... but rather an opportunity for the president to continue to carry forward an affirmative agenda."
Still, trade experts said the administration's goals for APEC would be tempered by the fact that Bush will hand over power to President-elect Barack Obama in January.
"The president, I think, is going to be loath to sort of push his own agenda or this administration's agenda with the moving trucks pulling up to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue," said Charles Freeman, a former assistant U.S. trade representative for China affairs.
The 21-nation APEC grouping accounts for nearly half the world's trade.
Bush will also take advantage of the gathering of world leaders to hold bilateral talks on encouraging North Korea to abandon its nuclear program, White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.
Bush will meet Chinese President Hu Jintao on Friday to discuss North Korea's nuclear program and other issues, Johndroe said. On Saturday, woven between sessions of APEC, Bush will meet the Japanese and South Korean leaders for further discussions on how to advance the North Korea talks.
NORTH KOREAN NUKES
The meetings are an "opportunity for all the leaders to talk about this, try and move the issue forward ... and formalize the verification protocol so that we can move forward with the North Koreans on that issue," Johndroe said.
North Korea has agreed to disable its Yongbyon nuclear plant, which makes weapons-grade plutonium, and to submit to inspections to verify its claims about its arms program. But Pyongyang recently slowed the dismantling work, saying it was not receiving the promised compensation in a timely manner.
Bush also planned to meet with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on the APEC sidelines. The two will discuss the conflict between Russia and Georgia over South Ossetia and Moscow's staunch opposition to U.S. plans to base a missile defense system in Eastern Europe, Johndroe said.
One of Bush's primary objectives at APEC is to expand global commitment to financial reforms and economic principles agreed on at last week's Washington summit of the Group of 20 industrialized and developing countries, Price said.
The principles call for countries to maintain open markets and resist an impulse to throw up trade barriers, a move that could exacerbate the economic crisis.
Since APEC is committed to open markets and nine of its members also belong to the G-20, winning its support for the Washington agenda should be an easy sell.
But many APEC members also belong to the Association of South East Asian Nations and remember being prodded by rich countries to end deficit spending, raise interest rates and let banks fail during their own economic crisis a decade ago.
"If you look at our response ... to the current crisis, it's 180 degrees in the opposite direction," Freeman told a briefing at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "We're lowering interest rates, we're propping up banks and failed corporations ... and we're certainly not talking about curbing deficit spending any time soon."
"It will be very interesting," he added, "to see whether the ASEANs at least point that out." (Additional reporting by Doug Palmer; Editing by Peter Cooney)