Battle Hemispheric Pact Environmental activists will lead an assault on the far-reaching agreement.
Critics see it as a threat to jobs, democracy and natural resources.
The new front in the fight against globalization is the Free Trade Area of the Americas, which 34 nations, including the United States, have spent seven years crafting. The pact is aimed at knocking down trade barriers to create the world's largest trading bloc, stretching from Prudhoe Bay in Alaska to Patagonia in Argentina. Completion of the pact is a priority for President Bush and an opportunity to prove his commitment to free trade, which the White House and business interests deem critical to the U.S. economy and say would improve living standards and stabilize democracies in Latin America. But environmental advocates and labor groups are mobilizing resistance to the pact, calling it a threat to democracy, jobs and natural resources. Using tactics similar to those deployed to disrupt the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in 1999, organizers are planning to turn out tens of thousands of demonstrators at key trade meetings next month.