Costa Rica will miss the deadline for implementing a free-trade agreement with the United States, President Oscar Arias acknowledged yesterday.

In a speech Friday, Arias slammed the country's legislators for slowing down the process. “The Nobel Prize for slowness and filibustering should go to our Congress,” he told reporters.

Arias will ask other treaty members for more time to pass laws that would put Costa Rica in compliance with the Central American Free-Trade Agreement (CAFTA), which was negotiated by the United States, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic.

The deadline for implementing the treaty is Feb. 29, two years after CAFTA went into effect for the second country, El Salvador. Lawmakers and business leaders here said the United States, as well as other CAFTA countries, will likely give Costa Rica more time.

Congress has passed just four of 11 bills required, in some form, to enter the treaty, which was ratified by referendum in October. On Monday, lawmakers approved the Budapest Treaty, which makes it easier to get international recognition for patents on inventions involving micro-organisms. The Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court (Sala IV) will now study the bill to make sure it does not violate the Constitution.

The other seven bills include highly controversial proposals to open the state monopolies on telecommunications and insurance. Presidency Minister Rodrigo Arias said recently that lawmakers may need two or three months to pass the remaining bills.