Bogged down by growing economic and political constraints, top officials from the United States and 14 Latin American countries are convening near Washington, D.C., today to rethink -- and to try to restore -- the effort to create a Free Trade Area of the Americas.
The meeting, called just two weeks ago, is a tacit admission of what some diplomats and trade experts say privately: that achieving a free-trade accord encompassing 34 countries in the hemisphere by the January 2005 deadline is too ambitious.
Regional negotiators have suggested a scaled-back approach, a sort of FTAA Lite, with the tough issues punted to talks in the World Trade Organization. Another idea would be to stretch out the timeline, targeting 2007. Or negotiators could do both.
''They are trying to come up with something to salvage the process,'' said Thomas O'Keefe, president of the Mercosur Consulting Group in Washington.
Delays or other changes in the focus of the proposed accord could affect the aspirations of Miami business leaders, who are pushing for the city to be named the site of a permanent secretariat for the possible trade pact. Diplomats acknowledge Miami's lobbying effort but underscore that they have made no decisions about the scope or size of the technical secretariat.
The proposal to launch the trade pact was the most trumpeted outcome of the December 1994 Summit of the Americas and has buttressed U.S. policy ever since.
''The ministers are going to take a look at the feasibility of completing the FTAA on the current schedule,'' said Richard Bernal, director general of the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery.
Negotiations to create a free-trade region have stalled because of serious economic problems in Latin America and a reluctance in Washington and other capitals to make painful decisions on market access that would give other countries a real stake in talks but that would kill domestic support for the pact.
Brazil, the biggest economy in South America and the most important for the talks, has been miffed by U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick's embarking on a series of bilateral accords and has dismissed this as the ''bilateralization'' of the talks.
Recognizing the stalemate, Zoellick convened the meeting at the Wye River Plantation, a posh conference center that served as the site of 1998 Mideast peace talks and as a retreat for Elián González. Attendence is by invitation only and includes trade or foreign ministers from Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Jamaica, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay and Trinidad and Tobago. No press is allowed.
One sign of the difficulties facing the FTAA is that the current draft of the agreement includes 7,000 brackets. Each denotes a separate proposal and must be squared away.
For negotiations to continue, the United States will have to talk seriously about lowering tariffs on agricultural products like citrus and sugar, exposing them to competition, and move to eliminate subsidies on grains like soy and wheat. But to take either step would mean a loss of agribusiness support, and no trade agreement has ever been successful in the United States without the backing of lawmakers from farm states.
Groups opposed to free-trade talks called today's meeting a sign of crisis.
''The Bush administration planned to push the FTAA through by dictation, not negotiation,'' said Lori Wallach of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch. ``Now, though, the FTAA has become a real negotiation, with other countries making demands on the U.S. that are giving the administration political heartburn.''
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