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US, other Latam nations to talk on trade pacts
18 Nov 2003 21:48:30 GMT
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(Adds comments from Oxfam, U.S., Brazil officials) By Doug Palmer and Kristin Roberts MIAMI, Nov 18 (Reuters) - With prospects for an Americas-wide free-trade pact up in the air, the United States pushed ahead on Tuesday with plans for more ambitious bilateral agreements with individual countries in South America, Central America and the Caribbean. As trade officials from 34 countries -- all of the Western Hemisphere except Cuba -- continued debating how to structure the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) agreement, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick announced plans to begin new trade talks with the Andean nations of Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia, as well as Panama. Zoellick said he expected negotiations with Colombia and Peru to begin in the second quarter of next year. Formal talks with Bolivia and Ecuador would begin at a later date, once those countries have finished preparations, he said. The four countries now get duty-free access to the U.S. market for a wide range of their exports under legislation aimed at fighting drug production in the Andean region. But those preferences expire in 2006 and the Andean nations have been eager for a free trade pact to lock them in. Zoellick said the Andean trade talks would build momentum for the FTAA, which has been dogged by a disagreement between Brazil and the United States over what should be in the pact. "The United States is deeply committed to creating a hemispheric marketplace through a comprehensive ALCA," he said, using the Spanish acronym for the Americas-wide pact. But Oxfam International said Washington's ravenous appetite for smaller, bilateral agreements where it can more easily dictate terms would hurt economic development in the Americas and jeopardize poor people's access to affordable medicines. CENTRAL AMERICAN NATIONS The United States already hopes to complete a free trade pact with five Central American countries this year and to begin talks with the Dominican Republic early in 2004. The talks with Panama would start in the spring. Until recently, the United States and Brazil have been at odds over the scope of the FTAA, with the United States supporting a much more comprehensive agreement covering areas such as services, patent and copyright protections, investment and government procurement in addition to tariff cuts. But a "vision" statement crafted by Zoellick and Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim as part of a draft declaration for this week's FTAA meeting in Miami appears to lean heavily toward Brazil's position by allowing countries to opt out of certain parts of the agreement. This has upset countries like Canada, Chile and Mexico, which already have comprehensive free trade agreements with the United States and want all countries in the hemisphere to be required to play by the same rules. U.S. business groups fear the Amorim-Zoellick text could gut the FTAA by allowing Brazil -- the largest economy in Latin America -- to skip out on key parts of the pact. Zoellick downplayed that possibility, saying Brazil and other Mercosur countries -- the group also includes Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay -- recently had shown more "willingness ... to cover additional topics," and said the United States would continue pushing for an ambitious, comprehensive pact. Brazil's chief FTAA negotiator Luiz Felipe de Macedo Soares told reporters there was no chance of changing the Amorim-Zoellick text, but said negotiators were considering other language to address outstanding concerns. He also downplayed a reference to "pluralateral" agreements in the current draft that has unnerved trading partners and many U.S. business groups, saying the word there was "not relevant, really not important."
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