FTAA Co-Chairs Cancel Meeting, Again

FTAA CO-CHAIRS CANCEL MEETING, AGAIN CHRIST CHURCH, BARBADOS – A meeting of Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC) Co-Chairs that was to have been convened yesterday (May 19) has been cancelled. Having been notified of this latest cancellation, Heads of Delegations were informed that a date had not been identified for a future meeting of Co-Chairs. The FTAA membership was informed that the Co-Chairs had opted to cancel their consultation to allow more time to absorb the substance of a meeting between Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim and United States Trade Representative (USTR) Robert Portman, who met in Paris May 2 to discuss the FTAA process. “The time may have come for a meeting of the full membership, to bridge outstanding differences,” said the Director-General of the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery (RNM), Ambassador Dr. Richard Bernal, reacting to news of the cancellation of yesterday’s Co-Chair consultation. The Brazilian and US Co-Chairs were originally to have met May 12, before the postponement of that encounter to May 19, to undertake further work toward building consensus on the key elements for guidance on the common set negotiations.