(OTTAWA) No further talks should be held to establish a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), say the Council of Canadians, the Canadian Labour Congress, the Canadian Federation of Students and Low Income Families Together. Instead, OAS governments should commit to ensuring that all trade agreements in the hemisphere comply with existing ratified UN treaties and assess both their legality and their impact on human rights and increased poverty.

A broad range of citizens' groups will gather in Windsor, Ontario later this week to demand "Rights for All" in what some are calling the next round in the "Battle of Seattle." Ministers from across the Americas are scheduled to meet in Windsor, June 4-6, for the Organization of American States (OAS) General Assembly. The ministers are expected to endorse an agenda for the next Summit of the Americas to be held in Quebec City in 2001, which will ratify negotiations to date on the creation of a Free Trade Area of the Americas - a NAFTA for the Western Hemisphere. Civil society groups are planning to be in Windsor to protest the event and to demand Democracy, Social Justice and Fair Trade for the Americas.

"Seattle and Washington showed that people are hungry for greater democracy, openness and respect. Governments represented are eroding our health care, education, environment, and our rights," says CLC Executive Vice-President Hassan Yussuff. "The rights of the people of this hemisphere must be respected. OAS leaders must understand this, so we intend to keep the pressure on."

"These ministers must ensure that human rights, labour and environmental standards are protected," said Maude Barlow, National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians. "When we look at the effects that the WTO, NAFTA and other trade agreements have had on basic standards, it's clear that all trade agreements have done is to erode those standards for the profit of big business. Canadians have said that we will no longer be shut out of these discussions."

"If basic human rights cannot be protected, the ministers should stop the talks on establishing a bigger zone of free trade," said Josephine Grey, leader of Low Income Families Together.

Over 100 million people in OAS countries live on less than $2 a day. IMF/World Bank policies have imposed drastic cuts and privatization on government services, raised interest rates, and forced countries to open their economies to more foreign ownership and transnational corporations. Now OAS governments want a NAFTA-style trade agreement to put these policies beyond repeal by future governments, critics say. That agreement, called the FTAA, will further enrich elites at the expense of the rest of us.