Brazilian officials: We'd rather negotiate with EU than U.S.

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The Brazilian government, which is at odds with Washington over the planned Free Trade Area of the Americas, or FTAA, said Monday that it would be easier and more profitable for the Mercosur trade bloc to negotiate with the EU.

Two members of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's Cabinet said that European nations are introducing "important changes" to its common agricultural policy that clear the way for a free-trade agreement between the European Union and Mercosur, a bloc comprising Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay.

The issue of farm subsidies has been a sore point in negotiations aimed at making the U.S.-sponsored FTAA a reality by 2005.

Big agricultural exporting nations such as Brazil are pressing the United States to drastically reduce the huge subsidies paid to farmers, saying such payments distort markets and hurt non-U.S. growers.

http://www.falkland-malvinas.com/Detalle.asp?NUM=2775

...Bush must be taking off his trousers by the head!

what a horrible excuse for a Leader Bunnypants* is.

Only people kept helpless and disinfotained by a combination of Corporate TV Pravda and Goebbels v2.0 could have this much of a disconnect from reality.

The people ensnared by Goebbels v1.0 and the original Pravda had the same problem.

On the same day Brazil turned bush down on Iraq support and just after the Cancun meetings it also signed a common trade agreement with China and India. The three together represent more than half of the world's population. You want globalism? Maybe you're going to get it but not the way you expected. The times they are a changing.

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GENEVA - The group of developing countries known as G22, or G20 plus, which united in Cancun, Mexico, to oppose continuing farm subsidies in the United States and the European Union, is preparing to continue World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations despite the debacle of the ministerial conference last month in Cancun.

The G22 (Group of 22) held meetings on Thursday in Geneva to assess the situation after the thwarted outcome of the Fifth WTO Ministerial Conference three weeks ago in the Mexican Caribbean resort. The first discussion involved the core countries of the G22: Argentina, Brazil, China, India and South Africa. Later, the full membership gathered at the WTO headquarters to hammer out strategy.

...A month prior to Cancun, the two trade powers had presented an initiative in which they said they would cede some of those measures and open their markets to agricultural products from developing countries. But the developing world's leaders argued that the initiative did not go far enough, and set to creating their own bloc for negotiating farm trade issues.

The current members of the G22 are Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Egypt, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, South Africa, Thailand and Venezuela.

More than 51 percent of the world's population and 63 percent of farmers live in the G22 countries, which produce more than a fifth of global agricultural output and more than a quarter of farm exports.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/EJ04Dj01.html


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Members of the G-22 pose for the family picture in Buenos Aires. Fifteen of the 22 countries which formed the group in Cancun have sent delegates to the meeting.(AFP/Ali Burafi)

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....Costa Rica’s pull-out came ahead of the key meeting of G-22 foreign ministers/officials, hosted by Argentina.

After the end of the Ministerial, other Latin American countries withdrew from the coalition, namely Colombia and Peru.

At the same time, several American politicians and lawmakers had warned Latin American countries that have an interest in or are currently involved in bilateral trade accords with the United States, that their continued participation in the G-22 group could hinder respective trade pacts or opportunities to that end.

http://www.nationnews.com/StoryView.cfm?Record=43726&Section=LO