Hemisphere Summit to Set Goal of a Free-Trade Zone

President Clinton and the leaders of 33 other Western Hemisphere nations will set a goal of creating a free-trade zone joining the United States, Canada and all of Latin America when they meet this weekend in Miami in the first hemisphere-wide summit conference in a generation, officials said Monday.

Clinton Administration officials said that the most difficult issue to resolve in establishing the goal is a target date. They indicated that the 34 leaders will aim for a 10-year negotiating plan under which an accord would be in place by 2005 that would eliminate all tariffs and other barriers to trade within the hemisphere.

The summit agreement is also expected to pledge tougher adherence to standards protecting workers’ rights and the environment, two sensitive issues that almost derailed the precedent-setting North American Free Trade Agreement last year.

The conference, known as the Summit of the Americas, will delve into such still-touchy issues as corruption, drugs, terrorism and human rights. Its heart, however, will be the dramatic expansion of economic activity among the nations of North, Central and South America as Clinton tries to push international trade into the forefront of the hemisphere’s relations. The free-trade zone would encompass every nation in the hemisphere except Fidel Castro’s Cuba.

A draft of the declaration, which calls for a new “Americas Free Trade Area,” has circulated in Washington since a final pre-summit meeting Friday among senior aides to hemisphere presidents and prime ministers. A final declaration is scheduled to be made public Sunday at the conclusion of the three-day conference.

On Sunday, Clinton is expected to take the first step toward reaching the free-trade goal by announcing the immediate start of talks to bring Chile into NAFTA, to which the United States, Mexico and Canada now belong.

Chile is “ready for a free-trade agreement with the President of the United States. President Clinton is committed to (achieving) that--and watch what happens in Miami,” Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen said in a speech Monday at the National Press Club.

Setting a specific target date for removing all barriers to trade is considered of particular importance because it would move participants beyond rhetoric and toward a tangible goal intended to boost commercial opportunities in the second-fastest-growing region of the world, after Asia.

U.S. officials said that a final agreement among the 34 nations has not been reached. “We expect that to happen,” U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor said.

By setting a specific target for achieving a free-trade accord and linking it to substantive goals, officials hope to add a measure of concrete progress to what otherwise is likely to turn into a largely ceremonial gathering highlighting the hemisphere’s economic growth, democracy and free-market philosophy.

The summit is the first such gathering of all the leaders of the region, with the exception of Castro, since a conference in Uruguay in 1967. It is intended to go beyond the limited achievements of that meeting, held when most Latin American countries deliberately limited trade and when U.S. policy was focused on foreign aid.

Several groups of nations already have taken steps to remove tariffs and other barriers to commerce, such as quotas. The goal is to see their economies grow because of greater cross-border sales and to achieve improved standards of living.

The draft declaration’s handling of the issue of workers’ rights and the environment was a diplomatic success for the Administration.

The United States pressed for specific treatment of the issues. One senior Administration official said the issues would be accorded “a separate paragraph” in the final declaration.