BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) - A Free Trade Area of the Americas meeting scheduled for April in Mexico has been suspended because of differences over farm subsidies, an Argentine official said Thursday.
Argentine Foreign Vice-Minister Martin Redrado did not announce a new date for the negotiations, which last month were also postponed because of similar disagreements. "The talks have stalled because we have not reached an agreement on the subsidy issue," Redrado said.
"It still remains too ambiguous" for some the countries involved in the talks, he said.
The Puebla, Mexico, round was expected to be held April 22-23.
Redrado spoke after an informal meeting of some 12 countries involved in the negotiations about creating a 34-country Free-Trade Agreement of the Americas. The U.S. administration has said its goal is to have the agreement in place by 2005.
It marks the third time this year the FTAA negotiations have hit a snag. A February meeting in Puebla ended in deadlock after the countries were unable to resolve disputes over U.S. farm subsidies.
U.S. deputy trade representative Peter Allgeier, who represented the United States at the two days of talks, said January 2005 remains the deadline for completing the negotiations, in spite of the failure to reach a breakthrough in the discussions this week in Buenos Aires.
"Obviously, we would have liked to have completed our work at this meeting but it is just proving more difficult," Allgeier said in a telephone conference call.
He said May would probably be the earliest all countries could reconvene the negotiations.
However, critics of the effort to establish a hemisphere-wide free trade area said the failure of the latest talks shows the effort was foundering.
"This is the third save the Free Trade Area of the Americas emergency meeting that has collapsed since the Miami FTAA ministerial" last fall, said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch.
"Given the deep deadlock between blocs of countries with opposing views of what an FTAA should be, it is amazing that the Bush administration still insists that the FTAA is alive," she said.
The FTAA talks are being carried forward along a two-tier approach in which all countries have agreed to basic trade liberalization but some have expressed concerned about moving to fully lifting trade barriers as part of the agreement.
One bloc of countries, led by Argentina and Brazil, is refusing to negotiate in various trade areas where the United States wants barriers removed. The group said it will continue with its intransigence as long as the United States refuses to have the issue of agricultural subsidies covered in the FTAA talks.
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