MIAMI, (Reuters):
AFTER NINE years of big talk and high hopes, it's make or break time for the Free Trade Area of the Americas, a proposed trade agreement covering 34 countries stretching from Canada to the southern tip of Latin America.
Trade ministers from around the region are meeting in Miami, the traditional gateway to the Americas, this Thursday and Friday. Lower level trade officials began the latest negotiations over the weekend.
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton and leaders from every other country in the Western Hemisphere, except Cuba, launched negotiations in Miami in 1994 to create the world's largest free trade zone, covering nearly 800 million people.
Now, with the January 2005 deadline drawing closer and many difficult issues still unresolved, U.S. and Brazilian officials in charge of this week's meeting are anxious to avoid an embarrassing failure on the heels of the collapse of world trade talks two months ago in Cancun, Mexico.
A draft declaration appeared to lean heavily in favour of a scaled-down version of the FTAA proposed by Brazil and opposed by the United States. But chief U.S. negotiator for the FTAA, Ross Wilson denied Washington had caved in.
"Nobody here is talking about retreating in any significant or substantive ways from the goals that have been set by the 34 nations involved in this exercise," he said.
Adhemar Bahadian, the Brazilian co-chair of the negotiations, told reporters countries "don't have to reach an agreement" this week on whether contentious areas like investment, government procurement or intellectual property rights will be included in the final pact.
Opponents of the talks, who range from labor unionists to environmentalists and anarchists, are converging on the city to protest the planned agreement. Miami authorities, who are expecting tens of thousands of protesters, have prepared for weeks to counter any disruption and were starting to shut down streets around the downtown conference area.
U.S. AND BRAZIL LEAD TALKS
The United States and Brazil, the two main adversaries in the negotiations, are co-chairing the talks.
The draft declaration, which the 34 ministers are expected to approve later this week, contains four paragraphs crafted by U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick and Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim that outline a vision for the FTAA.
It calls for a "comprehensive" agreement, based on a "common and balanced set of rights and obligations applicable to all countries." But in a key U.S. concession to Brazil, it acknowledges the possibility of some countries opting out of higher levels of commitment in certain areas of the pact.
The draft declaration maintains some U.S. leverage by linking the free trade benefits for a particular country to the commitments it is willing to make.
Brazil has been loathe to negotiate certain regional rules unless the United States puts its massive domestic farm subsidies on the table. However, Washington says it can only negotiate that in the World Trade Organization because of the need to include the European Union and Japan in any agreement.
Anti-FTAA activists' objections to the pact range from worries over job losses to concerns over the environment.
Protest action on Monday featured a small "nude-in" outside a Gap Inc.`GPS.N clothing store, which some activists view as guilty of using sweat-shop labor to make its products. About a dozen protesters, some stripped to their underwear, demonstrated in front of a GAP store on Miami Beach.
