PUEBLA, Mexico - With the United States and Brazil at odds over market access and agriculture, trade negotiators were deadlocked as they faced a deadline today in the latest round of talks to create a Free Trade Area of the Americas.
The Brazilian and U.S. co-chairmen of the talks met Thursday with the countries that have presented five separate proposals that would be the blueprint for common FTAA obligations.
Observers said the effort to reach a consensus on the proposals wasn't fruitful.
Most negotiators agree it is an uphill battle to reach a meeting of the minds on a negotiating road map and a timetable for talks by today's deadline.
''I haven't lost hope of finishing my work tomorrow,'' Adhemar Bahadian, the Brazilian co-chair of the negotiating effort, said during a news briefing Thursday.
''But I have canceled my ticket for Friday night,'' he added, meaning talks could end late.
Brazilian trade negotiators were seen as global leaders in World Trade Organization talks in September. But it hasn't been clear where the Brazilians have been heading in recent FTAA negotiations.
As the Puebla talks opened, Bahadian reflected some of his delegation's ambivalence over the effort, comparing the FTAA to ``a stripper in a cheap cabaret.''
''At night under the dim lights, she is a goddess,'' Bahadian told reporters. ``But in the daytime she is something different. Maybe not even a woman.''
As the largest economy in South America with an economy of $550 billion, Brazil's participation in the FTAA is crucial.
A private dinner Wednesday attended by Brazilian and U.S. heads of delegations, along with representatives of a handful of other countries, failed to break a stalemate over how a complicated, two-tier system of negotiations can proceed and what products and services will be on the table, trade negotiators said Thursday.
UNPRECEDENTED
''The FTAA, in the Brazilian case, is the most sensitive negotiations that we've had in our history,'' said Marcos Sawaya Jank, president of IcOne, the Institute for International Trade Negotiations in Sao Paulo, and an advisor at the talks.
But experts say contradictions inside Brazil over the FTAA could be hampering progress toward reaching a hemispheric trade pact.
Not only is Brazil's governing Workers Party -- historically opposed to a free-trade agreement with the United States -- divided over supporting or scuttling the country's participation in the proposed hemispheric trade bloc. But the captains of Brazilian agriculture and industry are also at odds, Sawaya Hank said.
Big agribusiness groups, such as citrus and soybeans farmers, and industries like textiles and footwear are pushing to open new markets, while the chemical, electronics and capital goods sectors, among others, are on the defensive.
Some services, like telecommunications and banking, are open to foreign investment, while the insurance industry is among the sectors averse to more foreign involvement.
DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS
The contradictions for leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva are obvious. His government is pushing trade negotiations, but the effort isn't particularly popular in Brazil.
One nonbinding referendum taken last year showed the FTAA was opposed by nine in 10 Brazilians.
Nor is Brazil, the leader of the Mercosur nations, the only country where public opposition to a trade agreement has become entwined with growing anti-Americanism.
Several hundred demonstrators gathered Thursday outside Puebla's Convention Center where the deputy trade ministers representing 34 nations are meeting.
''Down with the FTAA! Ministers go to hell!'' they chanted.
''Long live the Mexican Revolution!'' they cheered before burning a replica of an American flag with swastikas instead of stars.
The scope of the FTAA, once an ambitious project to bind the hemisphere with a trade-and-investment agreement, changed after global trade talks collapsed in Mexico last fall.
The Brazilians, backed by countries such as Argentina and Venezuela, insisted that the scope of the free-trade effort be pared back. Hoping to avoid a failure of regional talks after the collapse of global trade negotiations, the American trade negotiators assented.
STEP BY STEP
When trade ministers met in Miami in November, they created a complicated system of a ground-floor accord to which all FTAA members must agree in conjunction with the possibility of negotiating more ambitious bilateral agreements on investment, services, rules for government purchasing and other issues.
Not only has the negotiating process become enormously complex, but Brazil has dug in its heels over a proposal made by a U.S.-led coalition that limits the goods open to tariff reduction.
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