Trade ministers from 34 Western Hemisphere nations are set to agree on a timetable for creating a free-trade zone from the Arctic to Argentina by 2005, an area embracing more than 800 million consumers.
The US-sponsored plan to dismantle trade barriers throughout the Americas may be jeopardized by the reluctance of Brazil's new president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and his government to sign on to any accord that he says would lead to Latin America's "annexation" by the world's largest economy.
"When they take power, they will announce their position on all the issues," including the Free Trade Area of the Americas, Clodoaldo Hugueney, the nation's undersecretary general for integration, economic and foreign trade issues, said in an interview in Quito, Ecuador, where the talks are being held.
Brazil's skepticism about the free-trade area led US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, who's attending the meeting, to say the US will press ahead with the talks with or without Brazil, South America's largest economy.
Brazil can "trade with Antarctica" if it doesn't want to reach an accord with the US, Zoellick said.
Brazilians aren't the only ones concerned about the effect of freeing trade in the hemisphere. Ten people were injured yesterday in violent clashes between the police and 3,000 Indians who marched into Quito to protest the talks, according to the Ecuadorean Red Cross. Indians from Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Colombia and Mexico took part, march organizers said.
Sebastien Theberge, a spokesman for Canadian Trade Minister Pierre Pettigrew, said he's confident Brazil will go along.
Canada ``doesn't believe that the election of the new president will change the commitments to trade liberalization in the Americas,'' he said in an interview.
Theberge said Brazil and the US are taking over the joint chairmanship of the negotiations for their duration, giving the Lula government the opportunity to play a ``distinct role'' in the final phase of the talks.
Hugueney said the ministers have agreed on a series of negotiating sessions that would lead to the conclusion of the talks by the end of 2004.
The next meeting of the FTAA's trade-negotiating committee, which handles the market-access offers that make up the core of the talks, will be in April, he said.
At the core of the wrangling will be food trade. Many of Latin America's economies are agricultural exporters, and the US market for much of their produce is restricted by quotas, tariffs or both.
The US has import limits on oranges, sugar and steel that favor companies such as PepsiCo Inc's Tropicana unit, Archer Daniels Midland Co and US Steel Corp.
While Brazil is the world's largest sugar producer, its exports to the US are limited by a quota system. Orange juice from Brazil, the world's largest producer, is subject to a tariff of 8 cents a liter and a Florida state tax of US$0.03 a gallon.
"Access for agricultural products is essential," no matter who is president, said Marcus Vinicus Pratini de Moraes, Brazil's agriculture minister, in an interview last month.
"If there is no agreement on agriculture, the FTAA will be long delayed."
The US has said that while it is willing to tear down barriers to Latin American farm trade, it won't do so before parallel global market-opening talks are concluded at the WTO in Geneva.
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