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The rough draft of the hemisperic trade pact, 458 pages long in its English version, consists mostly of bracketed material that nobody has agreed on yet. Taking away those brackets and filling in the blanks will require painful concessions for the 34 Western Hemisphere countries involved.

President Bush (news - web sites) says the plan will open markets and spread prosperity across the Americas. But smaller nations fear they could be steamrolled into accepting proposals of the United States and Canada, the region's two richest countries.

Countries such as El Salvador (news - web sites) in Central America and St. Lucia in the Caribbean want special treatment to protect vulnerable sectors of their economies. South America's giant, Brazil, is insisting the United States give ground on farming subsidies and anti-dumping rules that keep out Brazilian (news - web sites) products such as steel, sugar and orange juice.

The United States wants Latin American countries to lower their generally high tariffs.

``Right now, Brazil's average tariff is about 17 or 18 percent. Ours is about 2 or 3 percent,'' U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick said. ``So it doesn't surprise me that Brazil wants to try to reduce barriers to its trade. We want to try to reduce barriers to our trade.''

Leaders at the Quebec summit pledged to complete negotiations on the treaty by Jan. 1, 2005, and ratify the deal by the end of that year.

That will put into place the Free Trade Area of the Americas, a duty-free zone stretching from Alaska to Argentina that encompasses 800 million consumers and economies that produce about $13 trillion a year.

Under the pact - billed as a natural expansion of the North American Free Trade Agreement that currently links the United States, Canada and Mexico - import duties on goods traded across members' borders will be gradually reduced to zero.

As in other international trade agreements, members will be able to negotiate protection for some products they consider especially important - orange juice in Florida, chemical products in Brazil, corn syrup in Mexico. But generally these goods should not account for more than 15 percent of the total covered by the agreement.

``We have a choice to make,'' Bush said. ``We can combine in a common market so we can compete in the long term with the Far East and Europe, or we can go on our own. Going on our own is not the right way.''

Many countries back Bush's view, but some are worried the United States will get the upper hand in negotiations and force them to give more than they will get in return.

Now, negotiators must reach agreements in nine main areas: access to markets, investment, services, government procurement, how to resolve disputes, intellectual property rights, subsidies, antidumping rules and competition policy.

That will involve an army of negotiators from various ministries who will spend the next four years swapping information, evaluating each others' proposals and making their own recommendations in emails, faxes and airplane flights up and down the continent.

A coordinating committee will meet at least twice a year, each time in a different country, to monitor progress.

No major progress is expected anytime soon because until May 2002, negotiators will be debating only procedure. Also, Bush still needs to win special negotiating powers from the Congress known as ``fast track'' which are seen by Latin Americans as a symbol of the president's commitment to the pact.

On the sidelines of the summit, the legions of delegates, trade representatives and diplomats were discussing their negotiating strategies.

``Two thousand and five is not that far away. We think it gives us a very short negotiating period,'' said Lytha Spindola, a Brazilian foreign trade secretary.

To prepare her ministry's small team - Brazil counts only about 15 trade negotiators spread among the foreign, trade and agriculture ministries - Spindola will be recruiting 80 new analysts next week.

``They will help us get more information and allow us to formulate a better strategy,'' Spindola said.

``We need more people,'' said Roberto Gianetti da Fonseca, head of Brazil's Foreign Trade Chamber. ``I mean what happens if, in the middle of the talks, one of our negotiators gets stomach ache or diarrhea? Do we have to stop the whole round and wait for him to get better?''