Protesters, police clash in Miami as doubts grow about FTAA

Police in riot gear push back protesters against the Free 
Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) 20 November 2003 in 
Miami, Florida. AFP PHOTO Robert SULLIVAN

Friday, November 21, 2003

MIAMI, USA (AFP): Anti-globalization protesters clashed with police in Miami Thursday, as tens of thousands of union workers and sympathizers marched against a pact that would result in the world's largest free trade area.

Ministers from every nation in the hemisphere except Cuba met here to discuss plans to implement the sweeping agreement, known as the Free Trade Area of the Americas.

Riot police, many clad in heavy body armor, swung clubs, hurled flash grenades and sprayed tear gas to move a crowd of around 800 away from a barricade near the Intercontinental Hotel, where trade ministers are meeting.

After the clash an estimated 25,000 protesters, mostly belonging to mainstream US labor unions, marched and raised their fists against the FTAA, which they say will result in environmental abuses and a loss of jobs.

A phalanx of police officers, standing arm to arm in rows sometimes four deep, kept the protesters far from the hotel. Hundreds more police waited on side streets as reinforcements.

Trouble began when riot police declared that the meeting was an unlawful assembly and pushed reluctant protesters several blocks away from the barricades.

The protesters resisted and one hurled a makeshift smoke bomb at police. At least 12 people were arrested.

The crowd was cleared "to make way for the legitimate, permitted protest," according to a police statement, referring to the early afternoon rally organized by the AFL-CIO a labor union umbrella group.

After the union march, radical protestors fired slingshots at police and set dumpsters ablaze.

The union march was peaceful, but during the day at least 36 people were arrested, police said.

According to a police statement, two officers suffered minor injuries. Police gave no further details, but a news report said one of the officers had been injured when he slipped.

The city is playing a delicate balancing act, since Florida Governor Jeb Bush and Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas want the FTAA's future headquarters to be built here.

In the meantime, the United States all but acknowledged Friday its grand plans for hemisphere-wide Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) were not on track for a scheduled 2005 launch, in what would be a foreign policy blow to President George W. Bush.

The United States agreed in 1994 with countries from Canada down to Chile - minus Cuba - to form the FTAA, and push forward negotiations ahead of the 2005 deadline for the zone to take force. It would forge a 13-trillion-dollar megamarket of 800 million people.

But some countries, most importantly Brazil -- South America's largest economy -- have been more interested in consolidating subregional trade deals before plunging into the FTAA too swiftly, they fear, potentially at a disadvantage to themselves.

US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick said Thursday "the broad goals outlined some nine years ago here in Miami were just that, broad goals, they need definition and they need focus."

Zoellick added that "with 34 very different countries, we had different concepts, different approaches to what is the common task. This isn't a real surprise, that the economies of the hemisphere and the world are different in the early 2000s than they were in early 1990's.

"The important news is that there's a common will and perception but understandably a need to determine how we achieve these goals," Zoellick said.

And he noted in a not particularly optimistic tone: "We have to decide whether we take it seriously or not."

Analysts say Washington is scrambling to make possible an "FTAA a la carte", reaching out to individual countries ready for free trade to underscore some progress, and showing new flexibility with those who now seem unable or simply unwilling to get across the finish line.

Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said negotiators needed to get a "workable" and "flexible" FTAA on a track that combines realism and ambitions.

Amorim explained: "Our main task here (in Miami) is to concretize a step forward, to have a declaration that is an enabling one and will make it possible for us to continue intensified negotiations."

"During seven years a lot was discussed but the actual negotiations have hardly started. We have been concentrated to some extent on architecture, because otherwise we wouldn't know where to put the furniture ... We're trying to get a mutual understanding ... to find a way that will allow us to go ambitiously of course but also in a balanced way," Amorim stressed.

Though Brazil and the United States have agreed to allow a two-track arrangement to come out of the ministerial level FTAA meetings under way in Miami, countries that already have free trade deals with the United States, such as Canada, Mexico and Chile, have voiced some disappointment at the unwillingness of some others to get on the more ambitious track.

"We need to have flexibility," Amorim said. "We're not putting (negotiations) aside, we're being realistic ... It is very important to have in mind the awareness that we live in an asymmetric world.

"The more we recognize our differences, the more well be able to have an effective approach," the top Brazilian diplomat said. 

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