BRASILIA, Brazil (Reuters) - The U.S. ambassador to Brazil is confident the two countries will agree on an Americas-wide trade pact at a meeting in Miami next month.
Speaking in the same week that a Brazilian minister warned the Miami meeting could collapse, Ambassador Donna Hrinak said she expected it to produce a free-trade agreement encompassing 34 nations and was sure Brazil would be part of the pact.
"I am optimistic about the ministers' meeting in Miami," Hrinak told Reuters in an interview late on Thursday. "I firmly believe in hemispheric integration, I think free trade is a very important element, especially considering the time already invested in it."
Brazil and the United States have bickered for months over how to build a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). They are co-chairing the Nov. 17-21 Miami talks with the aim of creating the world's largest trade area, stretching from Alaska to Patagonia. The target date for a pact is January 2005.
Brazil insists Washington include the thorny issue of domestic subsidies to U.S. farmers, which Brasilia says restricts its exports. Without this, Agriculture Minister Roberto Rodrigues has warned, the talks could collapse like last month's failed world trade conference in Cancun.
The United States is adamant that domestic farm subsidies are dealt with at the level of global trade talks.
U.S. Deputy Trade Secretary Peter Allgeier, visiting Brazil this week, caused a stir when he said it was the "prerogative" of countries to decide whether or not they wanted to join the type of comprehensive FTAA envisioned by the United States.
Hrinak said the statement was simply "a fact as every country will have to decide" if they gain from the trade deal.
"The expectation is that we will have a deal with 34 countries," she added, speaking fluent Portuguese.
The ambassador praised the center-left government of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva for controlling inflation, running tight budgets and pressing for deep economic reforms. Lula came to power in January amid concerns in Wall Street that he would mismanage the economy.
"Like I said at the beginning of the year I thought we had a tremendous stake in the success of this government and I continue to believe that," Hrinak said.
"What happened in Bolivia is a good example of why we need the kind of model here where you can have responsible government. They are sensitive to the needs of the international financial community but understand at the same time that if you don't attack these serious social issues they'll come back and bite you."
Weeks of violent protests by indigenous groups opposed to free-market reforms culminated last week with the resignation of President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada.
Hrinak, an experienced Latin American diplomat, said she did not think anti-American sentiment was spreading in the region but rather that it tended to be directed against specific policies such as the Iraq war.
"We said during the Iraqi war and right after that we thought the anti-U.S. feeling was a mile wide and an inch deep," she said. (Additional reporting by Natuza Nery)
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