From boardrooms and barrios, ivory towers and union halls, thousands of participants in the crush of events surrounding free-trade talks for the Americas descended on Miami on Sunday for a potentially pivotal showdown.
Security downtown was tightened overnight, with barricades erected around the Hotel Inter-Continental, where deputy trade ministers from 34 nations are trying to fashion the blueprint for a Free Trade Area of the Americas. It's no simple task: In their first formal session Sunday, the officials met only briefly after competing proposals on the scope of the talks were put forth.
Nevertheless, they hope to hand over a guideline to completing the trade and investment treaty to trade ministers on Wednesday.
At three other hotels inside the barricades, workshops begin today at the Americas Business Forum and the Trade and Sustainable Development Forum. Participants in those meetings will offer the trade ministers recommendations on key points.
Outside the security fences, dozens of other events are scheduled as activists from environmental, labor, farm, consumer, student and retirees' groups hold meetings, concerts and protests to make their voices heard.
The trade officials are engaged in a make-or-break effort to salvage the FTAA process. The effort for regional trade integration has been floundering since global talks failed in September in Cancún, Mexico, because industrialized and developing nations could not narrow their differences over farm subsidies in richer nations.
During the deputy trade ministers' meeting Sunday, cracks appeared in a carefully crafted consensus between Brazil and the United States to aim for more modest goals. Under their draft, countries could choose which commitments they would make.
Chile and Canada countered with a proposal that would penalize countries unwilling to join in completely on tariff reduction or to accept a series of new nontrade issues. Those include greater investor protection, opening their services sectors, new rules for government purchasing and protection of intellectual property.
The chasm between the two proposals caused deputy trade ministers to break up talks 30 minutes after they had begun. The dispute over wording reflects deep differences over whether the benefits a country obtains should be conditioned on commitments for opening markets.
''The meeting was inconclusive,'' said Adhemar G. Bahadian, the Brazilian who is co-chairman of the negotiations. He told journalists late Sunday, ``To return to the previous situation is to go back to the impasse.''
Richard Bernal, who heads the negotiations for the Caribbean Community, said the countries were discussing ''flexibility'' on what will be in and out of the negotiations.
''We have countries that are so different in levels of development and size; we have some differences over what exactly should be in the FTAA,'' Bernal said. ``Everyone has a wish list and everyone has sensitivities that they want special treatment on those issues.''
U.S. business groups have opposed letting countries opt out of certain obligations. When the FTAA was proposed at Miami's Summit of the Americas in 1994, it was envisioned as a comprehensive agreement opening the markets of 34 countries in a single undertaking.
With difficulties in regional talks, Washington has opened a new front, with talk of bilateral negotiations to begin with Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic and Panama.
But Federico Cruz, an agriculture advisor to Ecuador, said that U.S. farm subsidies were still the crucial issue for developing nations.
''That is what caused [the failure] in Cancún,'' Cruz said. ``There has to be some flexibility.''
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