Summit Leaders Affirm Plan for Free-Trade Zone

The leaders of 34 Western Hemisphere nations left their beleaguered enclave here Sunday, declaring in the face of three days of protests their commitment to free trade and “to making this the century of the Americas.”

“We do not fear globalization, nor are we blinded by its allure,” they said in a document published at the conclusion of the third Summit of the Americas. They promised to create a hemisphere in which “no one is left behind.”

Woven throughout the three-day meeting and the 44-page Plan of Action issued Sunday was a distant but ambitious goal: to use trade as the first step in a broader effort to establish common systems for banking, human rights procedures and respect for a free press as well as cooperation in battling corruption and expanding citizens’ participation in government.

The idea that the trade pact could become the engine for expanded cooperation throughout the hemisphere reflects what has happened in Europe, where the Common Market, established to ease cross-border commerce, grew into the European Union, establishing common rules for everything from cultural exchanges to environmental protection and, more recently, a common currency.

In a separate meeting Sunday, President Bush, Prime Minister Jean Chretien of Canada and President Vicente Fox of Mexico delved into the shortage of energy in North America. They said their energy ministers had created a working group to coordinate efforts to make their energy markets more efficient.

At the heart of the summit--and of the bitter protests outside it by an amalgam of labor activists, environmentalists, students and self-proclaimed anarchists--was the leaders’ commitment to abolish tariffs and other barriers to trade along the entire length of the hemisphere.

The leaders called the goal to negotiate an agreement by Jan. 1, 2005, on the creation of a Free Trade Area of the Americas “a key element for generating . . . economic growth and prosperity in the hemisphere.” The trade bloc would go into effect no later than the end of 2005.

“For those who question trade and its benefits,” Bush said later to reporters, “I would urge them to look at the experience that we’ve had as a result of NAFTA,” the 7-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement, which eliminated tariffs and other impediments to trade among Canada, the United States and Mexico.

“Canada has benefited, Mexico has benefited, the United States has benefited,” Bush said.

He added: “We have a choice to make. We can combine in a common market so we can compete in the long term with the Far East and Europe, or we can go on our own.”

Besides Bush, the summit brought to this graceful, 17th century city that grew out of a French rampart over the St. Lawrence River the leaders of a diverse collection of nations--among them impoverished Haiti, up-and-coming economic powers Brazil and Chile, the island nations of the Caribbean and Central American states that are still emerging politically and economically from the wars of the 1980s. The only regional leader not invited was Fidel Castro of Cuba.

The attendees pledged cooperation in the fight against drugs and AIDS, in promoting human rights and in protecting democracy. And they declared that the key to reducing poverty in the hemisphere is greater access to each other’s markets, sustained flows of investment across borders, and economies unfettered by government regulation.

The vehicle for achieving their goals will be the hemispheric free-trade zone. But Bush, in particular, faces a daunting challenge in moving the process forward.

For one, he lacks the authority to negotiate an agreement that would not face the potential of damaging amendment by Congress. And if he does not have what he is calling trade-promotion authority (it was formerly known as fast-track authority), it is unlikely that other nations will join the negotiations.

The president expressed confidence--not shared by opponents--that Congress will approve that authority by the end of the year. It lapsed in 1994.

The actual negotiations among 34 nations will be another matter. The deadline to complete the talks by the start of 2005 means that the most sensitive issues will be coming to a head at the height of the next U.S. presidential election campaign.

The Tear Gas and Anger Were Abundant

If for nothing else, though, this weekend’s summit is likely to be remembered for the overwhelming use of tear gas to keep demonstrators at bay as they sought to breach a 2.5-mile chain-link fence rooted in concrete barriers--and for the anger that peaceful protesters displayed at the leaders’ lock-step march toward lowered trade barriers from southernmost Chile to arctic Canada.

By the time Marine One, the U.S. presidential helicopter, lifted off from a landing zone at the city’s historic fortress, the Citadel, Sunday afternoon, more than 400 people had been arrested. They included 253 detained Saturday night and early Sunday morning during a spasm of violence in which protesters set fires and smashed windows in a neighborhood near the riverfront, away from the summit site.

As the summit participants met in their final session Sunday morning, 20 more demonstrators were arrested--their protests against globalization now a familiar backdrop to such international gatherings built around efforts to lower trade barriers.

At least 46 police officers and 57 demonstrators were injured in the clashes, in which police used water cannons, tear gas and rubber bullets and the protesters armed themselves with chunks of concrete, rocks and hockey pucks, among other projectiles.

With Bush the most notable exception, many of the summit participants addressed ways in which the gathering sought to answer its critics. They argued that lowered trade barriers will produce economic progress, and they declared their goal of using that progress to benefit the most downtrodden--and not, as protesters argued, just to help multinational corporations.

“Our measures must be accompanied by steps . . . to contribute to the development of society,” Chretien said, singling out the needs of the “marginalized,” who he said are the “young, old, women, handicapped and indigenous people.”

President Ricardo Lagos of Chile said at the summit-ending news conference that the Free Trade Area of the Americas must be “an important tool of growth to benefit our people.” Fernando de la Rua, Argentina’s president, acknowledged a “history of indifference among countries” and said the final statement demonstrated a shared determination to promote “freedom, democracy, justice and equity.”

And Fox said that, as a group, “we have started recognizing the mistakes maybe we have committed in the 20th century.”

‘We Have Challenges Ahead,’ Bush Says

Bush made no such specific references.

Responding to a news conference question about the complaints of the protesters, he said that the partnership forged at such meetings will lead to joint campaigns against such problems as those presented by AIDS.

“I listened a lot. I learned a lot. There’s no question in my mind we have challenges ahead of us,” he said, adding, “We can meet those challenges.”

No one dealt with the crux of the protesters’ complaint: that worker rights, the environment and justice will be put at risk if international trade rules take precedence over national sovereignty.

But President Andres Pastrana of Colombia was perhaps the most direct when he said, “What calls us together is our concern for human beings and particularly to improve the conditions of life for the poorest and the most needy.”

Chretien angrily addressed a question about police tactics during the summit and the suggestion that it was not the place of the gathering’s participants to set trading rules.

Some demonstrators, he argued, “go from one summit to another,” a reference to the much more massive disruptions that occurred at a meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle in December 1999 and to subsequent demonstrations at international finance meetings in Washington and the Czech Republic.

“We could see it on TV,” he said. “We will not tolerate breaking the peace of the people.

“We are very legitimate. We are elected, all of us,” Chretien added, suggesting that the best way for those kept outside the perimeter of the security zone to have their say would be for them to “get elected to parliament.”

Bush responded in the same vein, but in a more lighthearted manner, when asked what those in other countries could do to help pressure the House of Representatives into approving expanded negotiating authority for him.

“Write your congressman,” he said.

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Times staff writer Robin Wright contributed to this report.