Andean Community and Mercosur ratify March 30 deadline for concluding negotiation

Lima, 16 Jan. 99. Andean and Mercosur representatives pledged to work more intensively to bring the first stage of negotiations for creating a Free Trade Zone to an end before March 30 and agreed to hold their next meeting from February 24 to 26 in Montevideo.

On stressing this commitment, head Andean negotiator and Colombia's Vice-Minister for Foreign Trade Angela María Orozco Gómez, estimated that two more meetings would be needed to complete the Tariff Preferences Agreement, thus concluding the first stage of negotiations.

The Colombian Vice-Minister reported that representatives of the two delegations at this technical meeting that started Wednesday and ended on Friday, had agreed to a "large critical mass of products, lending force to the negotiating process."

"The convergence of views and communications were good and we talked very frankly about the need for the Andean Community and Mercosur to move ahead swiftly with the negotiation," she went on to state.

A working agenda was approved at the meeting, stipulating the priority and non-priority products, the reciprocities, and the requests for reconsideration of product offerings that will be taken up at the next meeting in order to narrow differences in positions so that an agreement may be reached.

The Aide-Mémoire for the meeting, signed by the Andean Community and Mercosur delegation heads, Angela María Orozco and Brígido Lezcano Britos, respectively, specified that "the two parties exchanged viewpoints about the products of interest and made headway in the area of agreed products."

It went on to state that during the meeting the Andean Community delivered a list to Mercosur containing the historical assets that are traded and to which it hoped to draw special attention. "Ecuador insisted on its positions with regard to Mercosur's response to a special list at the last meeting in Montevideo."

"Those lists, together with any others that may be duly presented to Mercosur, will be taken up at the next meeting," the Aide-Mémoire adds.

CAN Secretary General Sebastián Alegrett, for his part, underscored the significant efforts being made by the delegations to meet the deadlines set by the two trade blocs.

"There was a highly favorable climate of mutual understanding, together with a political willingess shown by the negotiators of the two parties," he stated.