PUEBLA, Mexico (Reuters) - Talks to forge a trade pact for the Americas broke down on Friday over disputes about agriculture market access and export subsidies, but negotiators said they would return to the table in March.
"Simply, there is an impasse in the negotiations," Argentine Trade Secretary Martin Redrado told a news conference of South American Mercosur trade bloc nations.
Meetings are tentatively scheduled to resume the first week in March in Puebla, organizers said.
Negotiators had extended talks for several hours on Friday -- the last of four grueling days of negotiations -- aiming to draw up a plan to complete the Free Trade Area of the Americas pact by next January.
While they made progress on procedural questions, they could not bridge divisions over agriculture issues.
The Mercosur bloc of nations, led by Brazil and Argentina, wants a total opening of markets to agricultural and other products, while the United States, Canada and other countries seek exclusions.
"There will have to be some modification of positions, recalibration of the content and the level of ambition," said Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Peter Allgeier, a co-chairman of the meeting.
Allgeier told reporters he would "withhold judgment" on whether the January deadline could be reached.
Redrado said earlier Mercosur had ceded as much as it could to keep talks on track but that the United States had to give on farm issues and subsidies.
Delegations from 34 Western Hemisphere nations were in Puebla, a colonial city two hours east of Mexico City, to hammer out the rules and procedures for an eventual FTAA deal.
The plan seeks to create a vast open market stretching from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, with the exception of communist Cuba.
"We've had a week of intensive and constructive work ... but the delegations need more time," the U.S. and Brazilian co-chairmen of the meeting said in a final statement.
World trade talks in Cancun, Mexico, collapsed last year over predominantly agricultural issues. Redrado said the suspension of the Puebla talks did not signal an end to the FTAA.
"This is not another Cancun, because the process continues," he said.
Chief Mexican negotiator Angel Villalobos said the so-called G-14 group of nations, including the United States, Canada and Mexico, were flexible on issues such as services and investments but that Mercosur's stance on agriculture was "very ambitious."
The Mercosur nations, Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, are demanding an end to U.S. export subsidies on grounds they create trade distortions.
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