Brussels, 20/04/2001 (Agence Europe) - The 3rd Summit of the America's opened, this Friday in Quebec, in the presence of all the leaders of the continent, the Caribbean, with the exception of the Cuban leader. On the sidelines of this meeting, which aims to draw the contours of the largest free trade area in the world, will take place the second "Summit of the People's of America". This second summit, gathered, since Monday, close to 3,000 representatives from civil society in view of formulating proposals for fairer and more equitable integration.
President Bush, for whom this will be the first appearance on the international arena and an opportunity to make contacts with the whole of Latin America, hopes to gain a firm undertaking, from his 33 counterparts, to complete the negotiations on a FTA, stretching from Alaska to the Terra del Fuego, by January 2005. Nothing that we do in Quebec is more important and will have as great an impact in the long-term, he felt a little before departing for Canada. During the preparatory meeting in Buenos Aires, at the beginning of April, Washington - which previously insisted to bring forward the deadline to 2003 - finally accepted the date on which the American leaders agreed, in 1994 in Miami. The partners want to discuss, mid-way, the project and, notably tariff reductions, agriculture, services and investment. Other than the free trade agreement, the talks will cover the political and social aspects of cooperation (drugs, immigration, rights of the individual, cultural diversity, terrorism, etc.). It could also discuss the issues of poverty, child labour and the North/South technological divide. A "democratic clause", outlining vague criteria for the exclusion of non-democratic countries from the FTA, is envisaged.
Concerning this clause, the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues (FIDH) analysed all of the areas of concern generated by this planned FTA, in a report entitled "A human rights reference framework for trade in the Americas" (which is available from the web address: http: //http://www.fidh.org/ecosoc/rapport/2001 ). According to the Federation, the present negotiations show that human rights are still considered as barrier to the liberalisation of trade, in terms of the "unfair advantages" or "technical barriers". They hide a threat for fundamental rights, such as the right to food, education (privatisation of the education systems...), to health (removal of national vaccination programmes) or the right to intellectual property (ancestral knowledge of indigenous peoples').