MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

US-Andean countries decisive free trade round

The Andean countries began this Monday a new round of talks, (hopefully definitive) with United States with the purpose of reaching a free trade agreement similar to the recently signed by the US with Central America or Cafta.

Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, with Bolivia acting as observer, have nonetheless admitted that some significant hurdles remain particularly regarding agriculture and industrial property patents.

Talks in the US Trade Representative Office have been organized in twenty different chapters, including rules of origin, market access, sanitary measures, conflict resolution, textiles and other sensitive issues.

The current round of talks began May 2004 and were scheduled to be concluded January this year but have since been postponed several times, March, July and finally November, hopefully on time for the major World Trade Organization, WTO, summit early December in Hong Kong.

Both sides are determined to make this the final discussion not only because of the Hong Kong timetable but because next year the three Andean countries will be holding presidential elections.

However another hurdle looms heavily and that is the debilitated standing of President George Bush, who currently has the lowest public opinion support since taking office.

Peter Hakim from the US think-tank "Interamerican Dialogue" warned that the big challenge will be to have the free trade agreement approved by the US Congress.

Mr. Hakim recalled that the Central American (Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and El Salvador) and Dominican Republic free trade agreement was only passed last July by two votes in the US House of Representatives and the voting was twice delayed in spite of the strong lobbying from the White House.

"Access to agriculture markets and intellectual property will be crucial", points out Mr. Hakim.

The Andean countries expect US will accept a rather gradual tariff reduction period (as with Cafta) for agriculture fearing a "flood" of US farm produce. Similarly US would like to exclude sugar from the agreement.

As to intellectual property the US wants to reassure the standing of its pharmaceutical industry by demanding a limit to the introduction of generics.

Andean countries would like to see a clause against what is described as "bio-piracy" which is the registering by US corporations of medicine plants and ancestral techniques with no benefits for the Andean communities in spite of the fact that they have been using since early times.