By Bertha Henson, Associate Editor

EN ROUTE from the airport to the middle of Lima is a mural put up for the appreciation of those from the Apec economies.

In it is the Merlion, set against the Singapore skyline. Other recognisable facets of it are a huge portrait of Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh, and the Sydney Opera House.

As businessmen, bureaucrats and political leaders from Russia to Papua New Guinea gather in Peru this week for their annual meeting, they may well wonder what holds them together besides a rather large bit of planet Earth.

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