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CIAO DATE: 03/02
Volume 3, Number 2, March 1998
Preface
The 34 democratically elected leaders from the Western Hemisphere are scheduled to meet for the Second Summit of the Americas April 18-19 in Santiago, Chile.
They are expected to launch negotiations for a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), pressing forward on the goal they set at the 1994 summit in Miami for a trade agreement by 2005 and concrete results by 2000.
The Santiago summit will be about more than trade, though. It will focus also on promoting education, improving government and reducing poverty — all ways of assuring that the political and economic reforms of the past decade endure.