Upbeat Anti-FTAA Activists Meet in Cuba
Mon Jan 26, 7:04 PM ET Add World - Reuters to My Yahoo!

By Anthony Boadle

HAVANA (Reuters) - Activists from 32 countries who oppose the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) met in Cuba on Monday to brainstorm on how to kill the hemispheric trade pact backed by the United States.

Encouraged by growing resistance to the FTAA throughout Latin America, about 1,000 delegates from peasant, workers, student and political groups will spend four days planning demonstrations this year against the trade accord which Washington hopes to see in place by 2005.

Bolivian indigenous leader and congressman Evo Morales, center, speaks with unidentified people, during a brake in session of a summit against the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) Wednesday Jan. 28, 2004, in Havana, Cuba. Activists from 32 countries are attending the summit to brainstorm on how to kill the hemispheric trade pact backed by the U.S. The opposition leader was instrumental in the ouster Bolivia's elected, pro-American president, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada. (AP Photo/Cristobal Herrera)

Cuban President Fidel Castro, whose communist-run country is the only one excluded from the talks to dismantle trade barriers in the hemisphere, attended the opening session.

"We are hoping to define strategies on how to educate people about what is happening in the FTAA negotiations, what is in the agreement, alternative proposals and actions to try and stop it," said Karen Hansen, coordinator of the Washington-based Alliance for Responsible Trade.

The conference organized by the Hemispheric Social Alliance drew members of Brazil's Landless Workers Movement and Bolivian peasants organizations opposed to free-market economic policies advocated by Washington and the International Monetary Fund.

FTAA negotiations have run into trouble amid disputes between the United States and Brazil and Argentina over the size of U.S. farm subsidies, copyright and patent laws and foreign direct investment rules.

The region's governments agreed in Miami in November to work toward a watered-down version of the trade pact by January 2005, nicknamed "FTAA Light."

Of the three largest countries in South America, Venezuela is opposed to the FTAA, while the left-leaning governments of Brazil and Argentina are now seriously questioning it, Hansen said.

"There isn't the same kind of acceptance of U.S. proposals as there was in the past," she said.

Critics of free trade maintain the FTAA will destroy national industries, increase unemployment, deepen poverty and undermine local cultures in Latin America.

Castro, who has survived four decades of U.S. enmity and trade sanctions, frequently denounces the FTAA as a plan to annex Latin America to the United States.

"We are here to work for international union against globalization," said Quebec City student Thomas Frechette, sporting a red Che Guevara T-shirt.

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