Brazil calls on US to move forward "gradually" toward FTAA

US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick (L) shakes hands 
with Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim (R) as the 
two meet 7 November 2003.  AFP Photo/Paul J. RICHARDS

Sunday, November 9, 2003

WASHINGTON, USA (AFP): Brazil called on Washington Friday to support a "gradual" move toward developing a Free Trade Area of the Americas, citing diverse and complex issues it said would not all be solved at once.

After a meeting with US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said the upcoming FTAA summit in Miami should aim for a concluding declaration "that may not give a final result to every issue, but which allows us to move forward."

"We need to move forward gradually and steadily... There is interest on both sides in finding flexibility," Amorim told reporters.

The Miami ministerial meeting later this month will be looking to loosen up stagnant FTAA negotiations, scheduled to be completed by January 1, 2005.

"We need to find a formula that would allow us to make progress toward better market access, greater trade freedom, and which at the same time would respect differences in the level of development and sensitivities in different areas," he said.

The United States has suggested negotiating the elimination of domestic agricultural subsidies and antidumping rules before the World Trade Organization.

Brazil is proposing that market access be negotiated in the framework of the FTAA but that individual countries seek bilateral deals with the United States on a wide range of issues with rules defined by the WTO.

Amorim was asked at a press conference later how substantial the FTAA accord would be.

"The more we concentrate on market access, it's not light. When we come to negotiate tariffs on manufactured goods in Brazil and tariffs in other areas of agriculture goods or textiles in the USA, that's not light... it's heavy stuff. "Apart from that there are things we don't think we can go very deep into rule-making in a hemispheric context."

Rules on intellectual property rights, for example, should not be different in the Americas than elsewhere in the world, making it a subject for the World Trade Organization, not the FTAA, he said.

Amorim met for two and a half hours Friday with Zoellick, in a meeting that was "conducted in a constructive problem- solving way", the US trade representative's spokesman Richard Mills said.

"The purpose of this meeting was continuing and advancing a dialogue before the Miami ministerial," the spokesman said.

"The world missed an opportunity in Cancun and we hope that the hemisphere can seize the opportunity in Miami and advance the negotiations," Mills said, referring to the failed ministerial-level WTO meeting in Mexico in August.

Amorim underlined the frankness of the conversation with Zoellick and warned him of the danger of demonizing the G-20 group of developing countries, created in Cancun in August, and led by Brazil, which seeks the complete elimination of agricultural subsidies among wealthy nations.

Without the group, the less developed countries' positions would be too far apart, he said.

Ministers from 14 countries are meeting Saturday in nearby Virginia to prepare for the Miami meeting. Officials from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Chile, El Salvador, Jamaica, Mexico, Panama, Peru, the Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago, the United States and Uruguay will attend.

Brazil backed the FTAA when plans for it were put in motion in 1994.

Since then, Brasilia has tried to slow the pace of integration arguing it would be better first to consolidate a Latin American trade bloc to negotiate with NAFTA - the North American Free Trade Agreement, grouping Canada, Mexico and the United States.

The FTAA seeks to group the countries of the Americas except Cuba in a free trade zone stretching from Canada down to Chile.

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