ABSTRACT
The Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) process was launched during the Miami Summit of Heads of State in December 1994, 1 the centerpiece of a broader hemispheric initiative of political and socioeconomic cooperation among thirty-four countries of the Americas. The stated objective is to negotiate, as a single undertaking, a comprehensive and balanced hemispheric free trade agreement by the year 2005. The preparatory phase, which began in January 1995, was quite successful; indeed, with more advances than the Uruguay Round achieved at a similar stage of development. On the basis of this preparatory work it was possible to launch formal negotiations in April 1998 and hold a first round of negotiations in September 1998 and a second round in the first quarter of 1999. The creation of an FTAA would clearly be the most important chapter in the history of regional cooperation in the Western Hemisphere and mark a fitting culmination to a fast-maturing trade policy framework in Latin America and the Caribbean.
