Sunday, February 8, 2004
Protesters burned U.S. flags and tossed bottles.
PUEBLA, Mexico (AP) -- Talks on the Free Trade Area of the Americas have largely stalled over South American demands for an end to domestic U.S. farm subsidies, negotiators said Thursday.
The prospect that the talks could fail -- or result in a preliminary agreement so vague as to be meaningless -- cheered an estimated 1,000 anti-globalization protesters who marched and briefly confronted police outside the hemispheric meeting of vice ministers in this colonial city, 65 miles southeast of Mexico City.
"There is an impasse," said Edgardo Lander, a member of the Venezuela delegation. "The sticking point, as always, is agriculture."
Lander said there was a possibility negotiators might be able to agree only on a "minimal accord" by today, when the 34-nation meeting is scheduled to end.
Other negotiators weren't ready to give up hope and said that after late-night, down-to-the-wire negotiations, the deputy ministers seemed on the verge of working out a two-tier arrangement in which all countries would have to agree to a basic set of trade standards and then commit to wider trade openings as they saw fit individually.
But even as they spoke in optimistic terms, ministers acknowledged that strong disagreement remained about some of the most basic of issues.
Protests
Outside the meeting, protesters burned U.S. flags and tossed bottles and rocks at riot police. Many were already predicting failure.
"Even the negotiators recognize that these talks are empty," said Alma Delia Mendez, who marched alongside her young daughter. "They can't even say what they're negotiating."
The United States said it yielded on issues like investment and service-industry openings, but Brazil was not modifying its demand for an end to all export and production subsidies for U.S. crops.
Sources close to the talks also told The Associated Press that the United States had asked for a significant strengthening of protections for copyrights and patents.
Agricultural subsidies have been a sticking point in free trade negotiations around the globe, causing the collapse of World Trade Organization talks in September in Cancun.
"Unfortunately, it seems to me that this is beginning to look like Cancun," said Argentine delegation member Jose Maria Fumagalli, who represents that country's industry chambers.
Nations like Brazil, which has a strong agricultural industry, say subsidies rob them of foreign markets, and make their own farmers unable to compete domestically.