MAR DEL PLATA (NYTimes) November 6, 2005 — With talks stalled on forming a regional free trade zone from Alaska to Argentina, Mexican President Vicente Fox yesterday floated a new proposal: Exclude dissenting countries like Venezuela or Mercosur members: Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.

Speaking to reporters at the fourth Summit of the Americas, Fox said 29 of the 34 countries participating in the event support such a move. Aside from Venezuela, the dissenting countries include Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, Fox said.
He warned that he was “not satisfied” with the wording agreed so far for the summit. Top-level negotiators at the meeting have failed to agree on a key language aimed at renewing talks next April for the proposed FTAA.

Fox said that host Argentine President Néstor Kirchner ‘‘must do more to save this conference’’ and added that a bilateral meeting scheduled with Kirchner had been cancelled by the Argentine government because of differences over the US-sponsored Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).

“It was suspended,” Fox told private news agency DyN, referring to a meeting with Kirchner. “It was not our wish.”

And he added, “This summit has become highly politicized.”

Argentine government sources were quick to deny that any bilateral meeting between Kirchner and Fox had been arranged.

Asked about reluctance from Mercosur toward a Mexican proposal to relaunch the FTAA, Fox replied, “We are nearly 30 countries that agree with this notion (of relaunching the FTAA) and three or four countries that disagree... Let whoever feels it is beneficial join it, and whoever doesn’t, that they don’t.”

The Mercosur members do not oppose the FTAA but have been reluctant to set a date at the summit for high-level talks to move forward on negotiations.

Fox said the FTAA was an initiative of the Americas as a whole, not just from the US.

Neither Kirchner nor US President George Bush specifically mentioned the free trade zone in a brief appearance for reporters after holding a bilateral meeting yesterday.
Bush has said the FTAA would generate wealth, create jobs and help lift tens of millions of Latin Americans out of misery.

But Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez bitterly opposes the idea of the 34-nation FTAA and yesterday vowed to ‘‘bury’’ it at the Summit of the Americas.

A smaller FTAA?

Analysts said the results of this summit could include dashing hopes of creating a free-trade zone spanning the Americas, but might nonetheless lead to a large free-trade zone that dissenting countries would be economically forced to join later. The idea of the FTAA was proposed at the first Americas summit in 1994.

It could also push forward US moves to create bilateral free trade agreements with some South American countries, said Gary Hufbauer, an economist and senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C.

‘‘The practical outcome of Fox’s statement is to give a green light to US pacts with Colombia and Peru, and perhaps to create a ’small’ FTAA: North America, Central America, the Caribbean, Chile, Colombia, Peru and perhaps Bolivia and Ecuador later on — but leaving out Mercosur and Venezuela,’’ said Hufbauer.

Experts also said that a watered-down version of the FTAA could be a solution to fruitless negotiations that have failed for years to overcome key sticking points.

The free-trade zone would eclipse the European Union as the world’s largest, but its creation has been stalled for years.

‘Brazil won’t bury FTAA’

Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim yesterday said that Brazil — the world’s seventh largest economy — does not aim “to bury” the US-sponsored drive for a free-trade area from Canada to Patagonia.

“We have our stance, which is not to bury the FTAA,” Amorim told reporters in Mar del Plata.

 “The FTAA talks depend on the results of the Doha Round of the World Trade Organization... as US President (George W.) Bush says, the priority is the Doha Round of the WTO,” he said.

Amorim said that FTAA negotiations required “reality” and that one possibility would be to resume “four-plus-one” talks between the four Mercosur members —Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay — and the US.