MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

US speeds the pace of FTAA.

United States is speeding the pace of the Free Trade Association of the Americas, FTAA and anticipated that the mini-summit of this coming weekend in Washington will help define the final accord, expected to become effective January 2005. Just in case it promised bilateral trade agreements to all those countries of the region who contribute to liberalize trade.

"It's important when we are reaching the final stages of negotiation that all negotiators have a clear and common idea of the kind of agreement we want at the end of the day", said United States Deputy Trade Representative Peter Allgeier in Washington, just back from a quick tour of several South American countries.

"This is our greatest challenge before the ministerial meeting in Miami next November 20/21", he added.

All 34 countries of the Americas with the exception of Cuba, are committed to end FTAA negotiations by December 2004 in time for the January 2005 target of a free trade area extending from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego.

However talks involving agriculture are not advancing as expected and the recent failure to the World Trade Organization Cancun meeting has opened the possibility of "bilateral agreements with those countries who share our vision of free trade".

United States this year signed a bilateral free trade agreement with Chile, is currently in similar negotiations with five Central American countries and recently informed Congress that it will begin preliminary discussions with the Dominican Republic.

This coming Saturday fifteen ministers from the Americas will be meeting in Washington to define FTAA and agree "the instructions to be given to negotiators", said Mr. Allgeier.

"Obviously countries have different opinions, different perspectives, different objectives, but it's important we all speak the same language regarding the macro agreement we are targeting".

Current FTAA negotiations are being conducted by the US and Brazil, and the other countries expected to participate include, Argentina, Canada, Colombia, Chile. El Salvador, Jamaica, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Dominican Republic, Trinidad Tobago and Uruguay.

"We think it's an ideal moment to get together a number of distinguished representatives so we don't arrive to the Miami conference completely in the cold", argued Mr. Allgeier. After the recent WTO Cancun meeting US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick blamed Brazil, Argentina and other Latinamerican countries for sponsoring the G 22 group that conditioned any advances in the negotiations to developed countries concessions in agriculture, which finally frustrated the round.

Mr. Zoellick went further and warned that if "multilateralism" in non conductive, US will retort to "bilateral" agreements.