RIO DE JANEIRO (AFP) - Brazil and the United States remain at odds over terms of a planned Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) just a month ahead of ministerial-level meetings on the zone due to launch in 2005.
At a meeting of lawmakers from across the Americas in Brasilia Monday and Tuesday, negotiators for the United States, Peter Allgeier, and Brazil, Adhemar Bahadian, acknowledged they remained far apart.
Though Brazil backed the FTAA when plans for it were put in motion in 1994, Brasilia since has tried to slow the pace of integration arguing it would be better first to consolidate a Latin American trade bloc to negotiate with NAFTA.
The North American Free Trade Agreement groups Canada, Mexico and the United States.
Allgeier reiterated the US position that Washington and the rest of the region will move ahead with or without Brazil.
Bahadian underscored that the FTAA ran a serious risk of not getting off the ground if the United States continued on its current tack. Brazil says the United States wants to unfairly keep agricultural subsidies off the negotiating table. The United States says the issue should be handled by the WTO.
The FTAA would group the countries of the Americas except Cuba in a free trade zone stretching from Canada down to Chile.
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