MAR DEL PLATA, Argentina, Nov. 5 (Xinhuanet) -- A divided Summit of the Americas ended its two-day gathering here Saturday with most of the 34 member states eyeing the upcoming World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting as a chance to resolve their wrangling over a regional free trade deal.

    The 4th Summit of the Americas saw talks on the resumption of negotiations on creating the US-proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas, or FTAA, stalled till the end of the meeting, which was extended for hours with little headway.

    Venezuela, which is a key crude supplier to the United States but has developed an increasingly sour relationship with Washington, stood for burying the FTAA, saying the plan could become a vehicle for US hegemony in the Western Hemisphere.

    Mexico, alongside the United States, maintained that there should be renewed talks on an FTAA deal next year.

    Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay proposed shelving the FTAA talks for the time being.

    According to the document released at the conclusion of the summit, 29 countries agreed to continue the FTAA talks, while the others were not ready to create the trade bloc.

    Despite the head-on clash on the FTAA issue, participants overwhelmingly wished an opportunity to blow breath into the stalled talks at the WTO meeting to be held in Hong Kong in December.

    The FTAA is awaiting an opportunity based on the progress expected at the WTO meeting in Hong Kong, rather than a fate of whether being buried or not, Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said on the sidelines of the summit on Friday.

    Amorim agreed with US President George W. Bush that what matters most is the result of the WTO meeting.

    Before coming to the summit, Bush was reported to have placed high hope on the success of the WTO meeting to reactivate the FTAAtalks.

    Jose Miguel Insulza, secretary-general of the Organization of American States, has also looked upon the WTO meeting in Hong Kong as a glimmer of hope for moving forward the talks on a largest trading area in the world.

    Argentina urged the United States to make concessions during the WTO meeting on farm subsidies, one of the prickly issues described as "distorting trade practices" in the final declaration of the Americas summit.

    President Bush's father, former President George Bush, first proposed the establishment of the FTAA in the 1990s and at the first Summit of the Americas in the United States in 1994, leaders from 34 countries who attended the summit agreed to set up such a free trade zone, setting January 2005 as the deadline.

    However, talks on such a zone have bogged down because of sharp disagreement between the United States and countries like Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela.

    Argentina and Brazil, both major food exporters in Latin America, have made it clear that they do not want to join the FTAAas long as the United States does not remove agricultural subsidies. They complain that Washington's agricultural subsidies would eliminate the competitiveness of farm products from other American countries and increase poverty in Latin America.

    Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, an outspoken critic of the United States, has said the FTAA is "dead" as it only helps large US companies at the expense of Latin American workers. Enditem