[PEN-L:1383] AFP: Negotiations start for Americas-wide free trade zone

[Colombian Labor Monitor <xx738@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

                                =====================================
                                Government and private sector
                                representatives from all countries
                                in the Americas --except communist
                                Cuba-- are taking part in the closed
                                door talks at a Miami hotel to create
                                a Free Trade Area of the Americas.
______________________          =====================================
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Monday, 31 August 1998


                Negotiations start for Americas-wide free trade zone
                ----------------------------------------------------


MIAMI -- Formal talks to create the world's largest free trade area
opened here Monday, beginning a process that will tear down trade
barriers from the Arctic Circle to the southern tip of South America.

Government and private sector representatives from all countries in the
Americas -- except communist Cuba -- are taking part in the closed door
talks at a Miami hotel to create a Free Trade Area of the Americas.

The 34 nations will have seven and a half years to work out their
differences if they are to meet their self-imposed deadline to create a
market of 800 million consumers with an economic output of nearly 10
trillion dollars by 2005.

Expectations were high back in the heady days of 1994, when the idea of
hemispheric free trade was first launched here at the Summit of the
Americas.

But four years and an economic crash later negotiators are looking Latin
America's grimmer economic outlook in the face. Some analysts say the 2005
deadline is unrealistic.

Brazil is dealing with unexpected slow economic growth, guerrilla war is
raging in Colombia, a new government is soon to take office in Venezuela,
and investors are fleeing unstable currencies throughout the region.

"It's very difficult to imagine that this meeting will be able to focus
on long-term trade, as opposed to the financial problems various
countries are having," said Albert Fishlow of the New York-based Council
on Foreign Relations.

"All countries now are much more focused on preserving their links to the
international (financial) system" than on distant free trade objectives,
Fishlow said.

Another major sticking point is that Washington has failed to obtain the
critical "fast track" approval for trade negotiations from the US Congress.

"Fast track" would mean lawmakers could not amend the text of the treaty
once negotiators from all nations have agreed to it.

But Anthony Bryan, an expert on inter-American integration, said meeting
the 2005 deadline was not impossible.

"They may not meet the early deadlines that have been set, but the...
countries of the hemisphere are expecting this to be done. The
expectations in the region are fairly high," said Bryan of the
University of Miami's North-South Center.

The two issues expected to be the toughest are the first on the agenda,
with market access being discussed from Monday to Wednesday, and
agriculture from September 3-4.

Discussions on agriculture could be the most difficult due to the thorny
question of government subsidies, especially in the United States and
Mercosur countries Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, along with
associates Chile and Bolivia.

Other issues to be discussed over the next month include investments,
subsidies, antidumping rules and intellectual property.

The meetings are also taking place against a backdrop of plunging
international markets and economic crises in Asia and Russia.

The trade deficits of the region's seven largest economies --excluding
Mexico -- went from nine million dollars in 1994 to 17.2 billion dollars
this year.

Nine groups of negotiators from the private sector and their respective
governments will meet over a month in the Miami hotel, which will serve as
the free trade zone's headquarters until 2001.

        Copyright 1998 Agence France-Presse
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