Agence France Presse | By CARLOS HAMANN | November 18, 2003
Miami police are suiting up to square off against tens of thousands of antiglobalisation protesters here Tuesday, ahead of a key summit of Americas trade ministers who are vying to establish the world's largest free trade area by 2005.
Trade ministers from every country in the Americas, except Cuba, will meet here Thursday and Friday to work on the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) agreement, but serious disagreements on agricultural subsidies, investment rules and other issues are delaying progress.
Protesters hope to stop the talks going forward, and demonstrators picketed a Gap clothing store here Monday, accusing the group of exploiting workers, as police seek to avoid the violent clashes that marred meetings of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Seattle in 1999 and in Cancun, Mexico, in September.
The authorities here are taking no chances. The city has barred protesters from carrying weapons or blunt instruments in a clampdown that also bans groups of seven or more demonstrators from carrying rifles, guns or any length of metal or other hard materials.
Some 2,500 police officers will be deployed on city streets to watch over the protesters. The authorities are expecting fewer than 20,000 protesters, but antiglobalisation groups said they will mobilise up to 100,000 diehard supporters.
Many of the ministers will arrive pepped up from last week's meeting in Bolivia, where the leaders of Spain, Portugal and their former colonies in the Americas held a two-day summit addressing agriculture, trade, poverty and anticorruption measures.
Among the adopted communiques, ministers agreed to lobby the European Union on agricultural subsidies extended to European nations that are considered to disadvantage Latin America.
The controversial issue of agricultural subsidies is also set dominate the Miami talks, as Brazil and the United States -- the two hemispheric trade giants -- strongly disagree over such subsidies.
The issue prompted the surprise collapse of the WTO talks in Cancun after Latin American countries rebelled against US and European Union farm subsidies.
However, trade analysts say other countries that are more dependent on the United States' vast markets may be more willing to compromise.
US and Brazilian officials met just outside Washington earlier this month in a bid to head off a damaging clash at the Miami talks. A senior US trade official said that meeting had been "positive and useful."
Ministers from the 34 countries negotiating the FTAA have just 14 months to go to meet the January 1, 2005 deadline to complete negotiations.
And aside from aggrieved protesters surrounding the talks, ministers will also have to tread warily inside the forum, as they must still negotiate an estimated 5,000 thorny issues, according to Eduardo Gamarra, director of the Latin American and Caribbean Center at Miami's Florida International University.
The US and Brazil, co-chairs of the final stage of the talks, stiffly disagree on agricultural subsidies, investment rules, pharmaceuticals and intellectual property, among other issues.
The 2005 deadline, however, may still be overshot for a different reason: 2004, when many of the most controversial details will be tackled, is also a presidential and congressional election year in the United States, and US officials are likely to be affected by strong political restraints.
Ministers searching for tips on how to bare their convictions honestly and get their messages across aren't likely to take a page from the protesters' books.
Some of the demonstrators who picketed the Gap outlet Monday paraded proudly outside the fashion store in their underwear, saying they would rather "wear nothing than wear Gap."Agence France Presse:
