Draft of Free Trade Pact Shows Snags on Key Issues : Commerce: Textiles, agriculture and financial services are among the sticking points.

A leaked draft of a fledgling free trade accord linking Mexico, the United States and Canada shows more discord than agreement on key issues, newspapers reported Sunday.

A partial copy of the draft, dated Feb. 21, was released to local journalists late Saturday by Mexican intellectuals who said they wanted to foster public debate on the content of the accord.

There was no immediate comment from the Mexican government on the accuracy of the draft, which was said to represent the state of negotiations at a meeting among the three teams in Dallas last month.

The accord aims to establish a free trade zone from the Yukon to the Yucatan, creating a market of 360 million consumers.

Newspapers La Jornada and the English-language Mexico City News said the 400-page document contained many unresolved areas in which each country had proposed its own text and no single version had been adopted.

In key chapters such as agriculture and textiles, for example, the draft left blanks to specify what crops or kinds of garments will be covered by the accord.

In a chapter on financial services, another area where Mexico seeks to protect its domestic industry, Mexico offers to open up the sector to foreign investment only gradually.

Some sections of the chapter propose limiting U.S. and Canadian investment in the financial sector to 1% of the total beginning in 1998, rising to 7% by the year 2010.

There was no U.S. or Canadian equivalent to the text, indicating likely disagreement on the issue.

La Jornada reported that Mexico also seeks to continue state support for certain agricultural products such as beans, corn and wheat over a period of 10 years to prepare the agricultural sector for competition from U.S. and Canadian farmers.

The leaked draft contained no chapter on energy or the automobile industry, two of the most contentious issues among the three countries. Mexico has so far refused to open up its petroleum industry to outside investment.