OTTAWA (CP) - A growing dispute between Brazil and the U.S. over the scope and nature of negotiations for the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas threatens to mire next week's meeting in acrimony.
Canadian officials have maintained an outwardly optimistic approach to the latest FTAA ministerial meeting, set for Nov. 20-21 in Miami. "The Americas region represents Canada's most important market, and strengthening our economic ties with the region through the FTAA is a priority," International Trade Minister Pierre Pettigrew said in a release Monday.
It will be the eighth ministerial meeting on the FTAA and marks what Pettigrew's office called the "midpoint in the final phase of negotiations."
An agreement among the 34 countries of the Americas is supposed to be in place by January 2005 and a senior government official reiterated Monday that the deadline still can be met.
But Brazil, on behalf of the South American trading block Mercosur, is pushing for the FTAA to be scaled back in scope.
Brazil has difficulties with a number of the nine FTAA negotiating areas established in 1998, including competition policy, intellectual property, investment, services, government procurement and trade remedies. Mercosur would like to see some of the issues thrown back to the World Trade Organization for resolution, making the FTAA a far less comprehensive agreement.
Brazil also wants agricultural subsidies near the top of the agenda, something that pits the South American giant head-to-head with U.S. interests.
The unwillingness of American and European Union countries to scale back multibillion-dollar agriculture subsidies helped scuttle the latest round of WTO negotiations in September in Cancun, Mexico.
"The difficulties (with Brazil's position) are over the FTAA's ability to settle a world problem," a senior Canadian official said at a briefing Monday.
Potentially compounding the impasse is the fact that Brazil and the United States are the co-chairs of this year's ministerial meeting in Florida.
"I think Brazil sees this as a dialogue with the United States, but there are 32 other countries at the table, afterall, and the trade relationships in the hemisphere can't just be boiled down to relations with the United States," said the official.
"They have a responsibility as chairs to lead the group on behalf of 34 countries, not just in their own self interest."
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