Hi Jan,
I had the same problem and have half of the solution you need. Still searching for the rest!
This works for Word Process documents only and if the document isn't too, too old to be opened at all. (Pages will NOT recognize Drawing documents or any other subsets of AppleWorks):
1. Open the Appleworks file, then save and close. This somehow updates the file or ??. It's a necessary step.
2. THEN drag and drop onto the pages icon on your menu bar and it should open right up perfectly.
IF the file is too, too old and you get a message along those lines that it won't open, there's hope if you have an older computer (you only need to go back one or two versions!) and can open your file on that on that, then resave it, bring it back to your original computer to drag and drop onto the Pages icon. Word will usually/often open, but you may lose spacing configurations and fixing can be time consuming. Pages opens it perfectly.
I'm still looking for a solution to easily converting Drawing files! No luck yet
My OS 10.6.8 has AppleWorks 6 installed, but it barely works at all. Not sure if having AppleWorks installed is a necessary step to complete all of the above or not. (Copies are still available on amazon.com for a very reasonable price.)
I'm not super-techie, just depend on dumb logic to find some sometimes very cool solutions. Good luck! I hope this helps!