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Jobs Dominate Talk at Americas Summit
11.02.2005, 04:41 PM

Leaders from 32 American nations and thousands of protesters are demanding the same thing as they converge on this seaside resort: jobs and better wages. But they disagree on how to accomplish that goal, with President Bush expected to push free trade and demonstrators angrily opposed.

Few believe the two-day summit that begins Friday will solve chronic unemployment and poverty, and even those with jobs in the Atlantic resort of Mar del Plata, where the summit is being held, question whether Bush and Latin American leaders will end up crafting deals that help the poor.

"I don't know what free trade agreements can do for us, and I don't even know what these presidents are going to talk about," said 66-year-old fisherman Dante Vitelo, hauling nets brimming with sardines to shore from the south Atlantic.

The fourth Summit of the Americas to be held since 1994 will focus on poverty reduction and economic development and Bush plans to announce several job creation programs.

"We have a great opportunity to deal with job creation or poverty by putting a system in place that encourages economic growth and entrepreneurship," Bush told Spanish language reporters Tuesday in Washington.

But an ideological battle loomed between Bush and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a close ally of Cuban leader Fidel Castro and outspoken critic of what he calls an "imperialist" U.S. government.

Chavez, a leftist whose government has used the country's vast oil wealth to fund social programs for the poor, said Venezuela would object to any attempt by the U.S. to revive talks on a proposed hemisphere-wide free trade zone, the Free Trade Area of the Americas.

"They are trying to include an article (in a summit declaration) to revive the FTAA. They aren't going to revive it even if they produce a 100,000-page document," Chavez told the Caracas-based TV channel Telesur in an interview Tuesday.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez told business leaders Wednesday in Argentina that free trade is the best way to create wealth and improve living standards for tens of millions of Latin Americans living in misery.

He cited the example of the North American Free Trade agreement between Canada, Mexico and the United States - saying the three nations have had cumulative economic growth of 40 percent since NAFTA was put in place in 1994.

"Without the free-trade agreement, these results would not have been possible," Gutierrez said.

But other countries do not want this weekend's summit to be about the Free Trade Area of the Americas.

The effort to create a hemisphere-wide free trade zone has made halting progress for years, with the United States and some Latin American countries far apart on a number of issues - including U.S. protections for American farmers.

Negotiators missed an original January deadline for wrapping up the talks even under a scaled-down two-tier approach that has been dubbed "FTAA lite" by critics.

Argentine negotiator Victor Hugo Varsky said negotiators were "advancing very slowly" as they decide what level of importance the issue should have in the summit's final declaration.

"Some countries don't want any mention," he said. "Others want to progress toward a trade accord."

Washington is not alone in support of talks on a hemisphere-wide free trade zone. Mexican President Vicente Fox wants the summit to nail down a date for the relaunching of negotiations on the issue, Mexican official Yanerit Morgan Sotomayor said in Mexico City.

All 34 nations except for Panama and Honduras were to be represented by heads of state at the summit.

Other differences over the summit's declaration have also emerged. Venezuela wants the declaration to state that 37 million people lived in poverty in the United States - a clause the U.S. doesn't support.

Leftist activists have gotten their message out early by staging a so-called "People's Summit" and vowing to stage a large-scale march Friday to reject free market programs.

They point to Argentina's December 2001 financial meltdown as a case. Once the darling of Wall Street, Argentina plunged into street riots, a searing devaluation and a gargantuan debt default as government spending and more than $100 billion in international borrowing sank South America's second-largest economy.

Despite a rebound, Argentina's jobless rate remains in double digits and 40 percent of its 36 million people live in poverty.

Still, Latin American economies show signs of improving.

Economic growth boosted wages and drove down regional urban unemployment to 9.6 percent, or 18.3 million people, according to a study last month by the United Nations' International Labor Organization.

Teacher Noemi Isley, 53, can't make ends meet on her monthly wage of $330. She plans to participate in a massive march Friday. "As a divorced mother with three grown children, I live alone and I never know how I am going to make it to the end of the month," she said.