MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Brazil and US ready to resume FTAA talks.

Representatives from United States and Brazil revealed that they were exploring ways to re-launch the stalled talks for the creation of a Free Trade Association of the Americas, FTAA.

"We looked into ways that could lead us to the FTAA re-launching process", said Brazilian Foreign Affairs minister Celso Amorim after meeting with US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick in Davos, Switzerland during the closing day of the World Economic Forum. "Talks are certainly not dead", emphasized Mr. Zoellick in direct reference to the US sponsored free trade association that will include all hemispheric countries with the exception of Cuba.

The region was unable to comply with the timetable agreed ten years ago to have concluded negotiations by January 2005.

Brazil and United States are the main negotiators of FTAA but they have different visions of how the final design of the association should look. Washington is pressing for a wide ranging agreement and is not interested in talking about subsidies to US farmers which Brazil insists in addressing.

Critics both in the US and the rest of the continent fear FTAA could generate more unemployment, greater corporations power, given the current experience of the North American Free Trade Agreement launched a decade ago and involving United States, Canada and Mexico.