Puelba Meeting A Missed Opportunity For FTAA

CHRIST CHURCH, BARBADOS – Stalled for over eighteen months now, Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) talks were brought back into the spotlight this week, by a meeting of FTAA Senior Trade Officials in Puebla, Mexico, August 25. At the meeting, CARICOM tabled a proposal – which received support – for all FTAA countries to call on the Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC) Co-Chairs to convene a one and a half to two-day TNC meeting prior to the IV Summit of the Americas (to be held on November 4 to 5, 2005 in Mar del Plata, Argentina). This meeting must have a clear political mandate to draft text on the FTAA process for the Summit Declaration. Individual countries will request the TNC Co-Chairs convene a TNC before the end of October to provide input for the Mar del Plata Summit Declaration. Conceivably, the TNC could be held sometime during the first two weeks of October. The Mexican Government has offered Puebla City as a possible venue for a Vice Ministerial meeting. The expectation is that the text on the FTAA for the Declaration would contain two elements: (a) a reaffirmation of commitment to the FTAA process; and (b) a mandate to Ministers to resume negotiations, and develop a timetable and road map for the successful conclusion of negotiations. “It is critical that Heads of State and Government send a strong political signal in the Mar del Plata Summit Declaration that the FTAA process will be revived,” said Director General of the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery (RNM) Ambassador Dr. Richard Bernal. An initiative of the Government of Mexico – which currently hosts the temporary FTAA Administrative Secretariat, the objective of yesterday’s meeting was to informally review concerns regarding the future funding and operations of the FTAA Administrative Secretariat. At yesterday’s meeting, both Mexico and the Tripartite Committee (comprising the Inter-American Development Bank, Organization of American States and United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean) indicated that financial resources were available to support the FTAA Administrative Secretariat for the remainder of 2005. However, they indicated that “a very clear signal” that the negotiations will in fact resume is needed, in order to ensure the provision of the necessary resources for 2006. This view reinforces CARICOM’s position in advance of the meeting, that administrative and financial issues related to the FTAA Administrative Secretariat are intrinsically linked to the resumption of the negotiating process. Ahead of the meeting, CARICOM demonstrated its commitment to the Americas-wide trade talks by urging the gathering to also consider the possibility of restarting negotiations, maintaining that future funding for the Secretariat could not be discussed in isolation from a frank exchange and realistic assessment of the future of the FTAA process. In this vein, the Region proposed an informal ‘mini-Senior Officials’ meeting on the margins of the Puebla meeting, to enable discussion to assess the technical and political problems affecting the negotiations, consider the options for resuming the talks and develop a roadmap for successful completion of FTAA negotiations. “The Puebla meeting was important in bringing attention to funding and operations of the FTAA Administrative Secretariat, but it was a missed opportunity to critically examine broader issues of process,” Ambassador Bernal concluded.