Negotiations to sign a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the United States, as well such topics as culture and tourism, are some of the issues Central American presidents will discuss Friday in a regional summit to be held in San Jose, Costa Rica.

The Central American Integration System (CAIS) warned this will be the year’s last regional summit that will also broach the topics of childhood and adolescence, as well as food security in Central America.

The Bermudas Islands will host the 7th Annual Conference on Caribbean Hotels and Tourism Investment scheduled for April 1 to 3, 2003 with the attendance of government representatives, members of the tourist industry and investors.

The tripartite meeting in Hamilton, the Bermudas capital, is aimed at ratcheting up investment on the so-called leisure industry and raising operational expectations in the entire region.

Quito, the Ecuadorian capital, will host the First Forum on Ecological Tourism next Dec. 19 to 21. The event’s main objective is to stimulate relations between the environment and tourism within the framework of the public, the private and the academic sectors. Several experts on these matters are expected to attend the forum.

A ballpark figure of 400 events –comprising congress, celebrations and meetings- will take place in Cuba during the course of 2003, as published in the Guidebook of Congress and Incentive Travel Facilities of the island nation’s Convention Desk.

Ecuador’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that Quito will hold the First International Forum on Ecological Tourism from Nov. 19 to 21, as proposed by the 14th Plenary Meeting of the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC International)The event seeks to pave the way toward a more dynamic kind of relationship between ecology and tourism within a framework of sustainable development and complementation, the ministry informed in a news release.

The environmental impact of architecture and engineering works will be the main course at the 2nd International Symposium on Architecture and Engineering for the Environment (ARINSEMA), scheduled to take place here from Nov. 18 to 20.Experts from Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica and El Salvador have confirmed their attendance to the working sessions to be held in the headquarters of Cuba’s Union of Architects and Building Engineers (UNAICC), the event’s organizer.