NOTEBOOK : Pact May Be Initialed, but Its Acronym Needs Work

Say it loud or say it soft, it’s never going to roll off anyone’s tongue: FTAA, pronounced “ftaah.”

That’s the acronym for the name U.S. and other negotiators came up with for the trading zone they plan to build among the nations of the Western Hemisphere: the Free Trade Area of the Americas.

Earlier, officials had expected the new pact to be dubbed the Americas Free Trade Area, which produces a more mellifluous AFTA. That would even rhyme--or harmonize, as trade negotiators would put it--with NAFTA, the existing North American Free Trade Agreement.

But it turns out Asia got there first, with a proposal for an Asia Free Trade Area. And South American officials warned that afta is Spanish for a nasty cold sore suffered by livestock--an inauspicious connotation for an agreement that covers agriculture.

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Several foreign leaders took advantage of their visit to Miami to meet with constituents in the city’s burgeoning Latino and Caribbean communities. Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide addressed a large, happy rally in the Little Haiti neighborhood. Argentina’s Carlos Menem tried to attend an Argentine American reception but was talked out of it by U.S. Secret Service agents who had not had a chance to check the site.

Prize for the most energetic visitor, however, went to Costa Rican President Jose Maria Figueres, 39, who took a morning off to go scuba diving off Key Biscayne. Figueres solemnly assured reporters that his expedition counted as work, because Costa Rica is trying to attract underwater tourists.

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Big meetings always snarl traffic. This mammoth meeting should have brought Miami to a standstill. But most residents appeared to have taken their mayor’s advice and stayed home: The only real traffic jams have occurred among the summit participants themselves, when all 34 presidents and prime ministers tried to leave a meeting at the same time.

White House planners neatly solved that problem Saturday afternoon by chartering two tour boats that carried 14 leaders and their delegations up Biscayne Bay to their hotels--thus reducing the number of speeding limousines on Interstate 95 by about one-third.