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OTTAWA, Nov. 24-- The future of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) could be determined early next year when negotiators from the United States, Canada and Mexico meet in late January for a sixth round of talks to rework the tripartite trade deal, a Canadian official involved in drafting NAFTA has said. Retired Canadian diplomat Colin Robertson, who also helped negotiate the pre-NAFTA Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in the late 1980s, believes that if no significant progress is made on the most contentious issues early next year in the Canadian city of Montreal, NAFTA could be dead and its predecessor FTA could come back into force. The fifth round of negotiations, which have concluded in Mexico City, produced no movement on such key areas of dispute as rules of origin in the automobile manufacturing industry, and raised the question of whether "the Americans are serious or are looking for an excuse to exit," Robertson told Xinhua in an interview. Following the end of the Mexico talks this week, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said in a statement that American negotiators "have seen no evidence that Canada or Mexico are willing to seriously engage on provisions that will lead to a rebalanced agreement" and that "absent rebalancing, we will not reach a satisfactory result." Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland told reporters here that Canada "simply cannot agree to" some "extreme proposals" from the the United States. | 
