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Clinton arrives in Chile for talks
April 16, 1998
The Clintons arrive in Chile
Web posted at: 8:19 a.m. EDT (1219 GMT)SANTIAGO, Chile (CNN) -- President Clinton arrived in Chile Thursday for a state visit and international summit with plans to promote the continuation of democratic reforms in Latin America.
The second "Summit of the Americas," involving 34 Western hemisphere nations, will launch formal talks to establish a free-trade area involving every nation in the Americas except Cuba. Discussions will focus on trade, drugs, democracy and education.
Trade is expected to be the dominant topic, including Clinton's failure to get fast-track negotiating authorization from Congress. That stopped talks for Chile's entry into NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement made up of Canada, Mexico and the United States.
Before the weekend summit, Clinton will enter into meetings Thursday morning with President Eduardo Frei, then deliver a speech Friday before a joint session of Congress in the port city of Valparaiso.
Frei said there is no fixed agenda for his discussions with Clinton because "relations between our countries are good enough as to allow us to discuss any subjects."
Trade between Chile and the United States, which boomed to nearly $7 billion in 1997, has been affected by several disputes that are expected to be discussed by Frei and Clinton. They include dumping accusations against Chilean salmon producers and others related to Chile's sales of grapes and wood products.
Economy Minister Alvaro Garcia said Chile and the United States might soon sign an accord establishing a mechanism to settle their trade differences, but it wasn't known whether the accord would be ready for Clinton's visit.
What is sure to be signed by the presidents, Frei said, is an agreement for cooperation in education, including an exchange of teachers and students.
In the first Summit of the Americas in 1994 in Miami, the three NAFTA partners invited Chile to join. But Frei has refused to negotiate unless Clinton gets fast-track authorization, which would ensure Congress would either approve or reject, but not amend, trade accords signed with foreign nations.
This week, Frei called the lack of fast track "an internal problem of the United States. Not our problem."
He said that "we in Latin America will continue to advance" toward a regional free-trade area.
Frei also said presidents attending the summit will agree to open formal talks for the free-trade area by June.
He said the presidents mean business: "We have the dates, the sites, the different commissions for the talks, and the members.
The Clinton administration has also assured that even without fast-track authorization, the president remains committed to pushing for the regional free-trade area by the year 2005.
"We do want to ensure that the United States remains at the center, as the center of a constellation of trading relationships," U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky said this week.
Security throughout the city for Clinton and the summit appears tight, although clearly not perfect: Erika Rae Rose, a State Department protocol official, was robbed of her bag with some $3,000 while lunching at a restaurant in the fashionable Las Condes neighborhood.
An aide said Frei expects Clinton "to express interest" in the Chilean Air Force picking a U.S. aircraft when it renews part of its fleet in a $500 million operation.
The air force is to announce a decision later this month and two American aircraft the B-16 and the B-18 are being considered along with two European models.
Clinton's audience Friday in Congress may include former dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who, at 82, is now a senator-for-life.
Pinochet has not said whether he will attend the session, and the government has refused to comment.
"That's a subject for the legislative, not the executive," a smiling president Eduardo Frei told reporters.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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