Cops Clash With Trade Protesters

Officers and a group of demonstrators clashed Thursday near the site of talks to create a free trade zone for North and South America. Police blanketed downtown, remembering trade-related riots in other cities.

Riot-clad officers used long batons to restrain several dozen protesters, some of whom wore surgical masks or bandannas across their mouths. Other demonstrators carried gas masks. Police estimated the number of protesters they clashed with at between 300 and 400.

Meanwhile, AFL-CIO organizers planned a noontime rally that they said should include more than 10,000 protesters against the proposed 34-nation Free Trade Area of the Americas. They pledged that it would be peaceful.

Officers were using their batons mostly to push back the militant protesters, but occasionally used them to strike demonstrators.

In a brief flare-up, gas that smelled like rotten eggs was fired by police. A protester scrambled forward and tossed back a canister. One protester stood in front of the officers waving an American flag.

Top trade officials from 34 nations were inching closer to a pact that would lower trade barriers between their countries.

On Wednesday, negotiators approved a draft text of a free trade pact, choosing a version that allows countries to opt out of more controversial clauses of the agreement. Trade ministers were to spend two days working to finish the text, which so far speaks in generalities.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick denied that the United States was backing away from creating an agreement that would tear down all trade barriers from Alaska to Argentina, which was how the FTAA was originally conceived.

Groups and individuals including labor unions, farmers and environmentalists complain that the proposed pact — the Free Trade Area of the Americas — will take thousands of jobs to other countries, reduce workers' rights by exploiting cheap labor and drain natural resources.

More than 10,000 protesters were expected to join a march organized by the AFL-CIO union Thursday afternoon in opposition to the plan to form the world's largest free-trade zone.

Union organizers pledged that the march will be peaceful and designated about 800 parade marshals to help keep the peace and point out any violent agitators to authorities.

The specter of violent protests loomed as police arrested seven people in a Miami mansion who were allegedly preparing for rallies Thursday and Friday with crowbars, metal chains with locks on them, flammable materials and gas masks. Another six people were arrested early Thursday on loitering charges.

At least 21 arrests related to FTAA protests have been made since Saturday, the day before the meetings began.

Since demonstrators laid siege to Seattle during a World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting there in 1999, demonstrations have regularly accompanied meetings of organizations like the WTO, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund.

Parts of downtown Miami resembled a police state Thursday.

Checkpoints with armed officers blocked pedestrians without proper credentials on several streets. Squad cars were on almost every block. Florida Highway Patrol troopers searched vehicles before they could move on. Several businesses had boarded facades. The Coast Guard cruised Biscayne Bay, next to downtown.

In related developments Thursday:

President Bush, visiting London, is encountering anger over tariffs he slapped on steel imported to the United States last year. Addressing reporters, Mr. Bush said British Prime Minister Tony Blair had raised the issue for a third time with him Thursday.

But the president was noncommittal about whether he will repeal the tariffs in the wake of a WTO ruling that they violate international trade laws, saying only that he would make "a timely decision."

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said ballooning trade deficits have not hurt the U.S. economy so far, but he warned that "creeping protectionism" could jeopardize the nation's ability to narrow the deficits without adverse consequences.

"Spreading globalization has fostered a degree of international flexibility that has raised the possibility of a benign resolution to the U.S. current account imbalance," Greenspan said in remarks to a monetary conference sponsored by the Cato Institute.

Pushing a trade spat a step further, China said it planned to raise import duties on some U.S. products if Washington doesn't abide by the WTO ruling on the steel tariffs.

China last week summoned the U.S. ambassador on Wednesday to say it was "shocked at and expresses dissatisfaction with" new U.S. quotas on Chinese textiles. Beijing insists the textile trade restrictions also violate WTO rules.