TRADE

North, South Americans Renew Commitment to Free Trade: In a final communique issued after two days of talks in Cartagena, Colombia, trade ministers from 34 Western Hemisphere countries agreed “to make concrete progress” toward the building of the so-called Free Trade Area of the Americas by the end of the century. But the group failed to announce the start of formal negotiations over the nuts and bolts of the agreement any time soon. The communique says deputy ministers have been instructed to report on “when and how to launch the FTAA negotiations” before the next trade ministers’ meeting in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, in 1997. The thorny issue of how to protect intellectual property rights and the Clinton administration’s insistence on including labor and environmental provisions in any trade pact were subjects of intense discussion.