MONTERREY, Mexico (AFP) - US President George W. Bush won a grudging endorsement from 33 other leaders of the Americas for plans to launch an ambitious pan-American free trade zone next year.
But the Summit of the Americas remained divided over the best way to combat spreading poverty in the western hemisphere and the United States failed to get an anti-corruption clause included in the final communique.
The free trade area, which would stretch from Alaska to Argentina, aims to create the world's largest free trade area, with a market of some 800 million people and a 13-trillion-dollar gross domestic product.
But as the special two-day summit closed, Argentine President Nestor Kirchner, half of whose country lives in poverty, lashed out at the US-favored strategy arguing "not just any Free Trade Area of the Americas will do."
"It will not be an easy road to prosperity," the Argentine president said as he joined leaders urging the United States to drop farm subsidies.
"The deal should acknowledge (economic) differences. It cannot be a one-way street, and it cannot be imposed."
Brazil, South America's largest economy, and key US oil supplier Venezuela fought to keep free trade off the summit agenda. But after intense haggling, leaders agreed in a declaration to endorse plans to finish negotiating the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) by January 2005.
But some leaders warned the accord would not be easy.
"International trade can be a powerful factor in development. But it should be just and balanced, benefitting everyone equally," said Brazil's leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Lula also insisted on governments' rights to pursue social, industrial, farm and science policies.
And "we must understand that the principles followed to the letter in the 1990s, the disappearance of the state, privatizations at any cost, were what led to ... the bankruptcy of our economy," Kirchner argued, calling for the deal to include safeguards and compensation for those hurt by economic integration as has been done in the European Union.
Bush's strategy for the region is to expand the free trade that the United States, Mexico and Canada see as key to economic growth.
"Over the long term trade is the most certain path to lasting prosperity," Bush said in a speech last week. "My country is committed to free and fair trade for this hemisphere."
But some Latin nations fear free trade cannot solve social problems that undercut their stability, and might not help the millions of the poor fast enough.
Leaders also agreed on measures aimed to combat poverty such as boosting multilateral credit for small businesses. They did the same at their last summit, and poverty in the region has increased since.
Earlier Bush said after a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin that Canada would be able to bid on a new round of reconstruction projects in Iraq.
Canada, which did not back the US-led war in Iraq, was excluded from taking part in the first round of lucrative reconstruction contracts.
Monday, Bush invited summit host President Vicente Fox -- with whom he had a warm personal relationship before Mexico opted not to back the US-led Iraq war -- to visit him at his Texas ranch in March.
Bush also addressed a key Fox concern by discussing migration issues. Bush has proposed a temporary guest worker system to legalize the status of millions living a stealth existence in the United States.
Half of the eight million undocumented workers in the United States are Mexican. The money they send home, amounting to 12 billion dollars last year, is Mexico's number-two source of foreign revenue, after oil.
Bush also briefly spoke of rivals Cuba -- not invited to the summit -- and Venezuela, saying the United States backs the democratic process in Venezuela that could lead to a recall referendum against President Hugo Chavez.
The leftist-populist Chavez listened with a furrowed brow, then fired back in his speech that despite economic woes this year "with the invaluable help of Cuba and its literacy program we were able to teach more than a million people to read in six months."
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