BUENOS AIRES (Dow Jones)--Argentina's top trade official sent a mixed message Wednesday on his country's support for a hemisphere-wide Free Trade Area of the Americas accord, rejecting ideas for a postponement in its 2005 deadline, but questioning the chances of rapid progress.
In comments to Dow Jones Newswires following a conference on Argentine economic policy in Buenos Aires, Deputy Foreign Minister Martin Redrado said his government was not interested in opening up discussions on the 2005 deadline.
"I think that there shouldn't be any changes in the target date we have already established ... The critical issue for us clearly is how much market access will this negotiation for FTAA give to Argentina and Mercosur," Redrado said, referring to the South American regional group of which Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay are full members.
Redrado's comments follow growing speculation that the 2005 target date won't be reached and that some Latin American nations are pushing for a more relaxed timeline.
Last month, U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow warned that progress on FTAA was going "too slowly," while the Secretary General of the Organization of American States was quoted saying Monday that the 2005 date "would be difficult to reach."
Meanwhile, the government of South American regional giant Brazil, which is a co-chair of the FTAA talks with the U.S., is currently studying alternative approaches to the negotiations, which could lead later this month to a formal request to push back the deadline.
Brazil and many other Latin American countries are said to believe that the U.S.' latest negotiating position - laid out in March - offers too few concessions in lifting agricultural tariffs in exchange for opening up Latin American industrial sectors.
Redrado echoed those doubts. He cited the slow progress of the talks so far, pointing to the difficulties inherent in trying to reach agreement on subsidy and tariff issues between 18 Caribbean countries that depend on European Union subsidies and Central American nations that have been battling for decades to have them lifted.
Given this and the U.S. reluctance to negotiate certain issues within the FTAA framework, Redrado said it may be worth Argentina switching its focus to the so- called 4-plus-1 talks between Mercosur and the U.S.
"One key theme that I see also for next months is ... to seriously look at how far we can get with the 4-plus-1 talks," Redrado said in his speech to the conference. "If we see the FTAA process being a slow one ... because there's a very large set of divergent interests - I think this is one of the paths we need to explore."
Redrado said he had discussed these issues on his visit to Brazil Monday and would do so with Uruguay President Jorge Batlle in a meeting Thursday. Brazil has recently renewed its interest in 4-plus-1, after putting the negotiations on ice for several years. Mercosur is expected to present a formal proposal to the U.S. later this month.
Launched in 1994, the FTAA is envisaged as the world's largest free trade accord, which would bring together all 34 nations in the Americas except Cuba.
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