MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

US reject 4+1 agreement with Mercosur.

United States is not interested in reaching an agreement with Mercosur and prefers to concentrate in the Free Trade Association of the Americas, FTAA, said Peter Allgeier Washington's Trade Representative.

Speaking at the Chamber of Commerce about bilateral trade relations between United States and Brazil, Mr. Allgeier made it quiet clear that the "four + one" initiative launched by Brasilia, "is something which does not interest the US".

The "4+1" proposal consists of direct negotiations between US and the Mercosur block (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay) for reciprocal market openings, leaving for further on the codification or more specific trade issues.

Mr. Allgeier supported his position saying that the US is ever less dependent on industry but more in the services sector based on information and therefore "intellectual property, transparency and legal protection for investments have become essential to any negotiation".

Instead of a restricted market access accord, US will make all efforts to retake discussions for the creation of a Free Trade Association of the Americas, which should have successfully concluded January 1.

The re-launching of these discussions between Mr. Allgeier and Brazilian representative Adhemar Bahadian are scheduled for the end of the month when they will try to define rules and contents of a common agreement encompassing the 34 hemispheric countries, with the exception of Cuba.

According to the current understanding, countries are entitled to signing "more ambitious" in the framework of FTAA.

Brazil and the US have repeatedly clashed over the hard core of the free trade agreement, particularly regarding agriculture and intellectual property. Brasilia is demanding an end to the approximately 20 billion US dollars farm support plan, but Washington refuses to include it in the founding FTAA agreement and would rather address the subsidies issue in World Trade Organization talks which would also include other countries involved in farm support such as European Union, Japan, South Korea.

The WTO agenda which is scheduled to address the issue next July, "should help us discuss the issue simultaneously in both forums", argued US Representative Allgeier who added that there's "a serious problem in Brazil", which is the lack of protection to copyright and patents.