Free trade agreement
Rice pushes for trade pact with Colombia
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Condoleezza Rice on Tuesday made an impassioned plea for the US to approve a free trade agreement with Colombia that is being threatened by Democratic concerns over Alvaro Uribe's government's record on human and labour rights.
The US secretary of state told a small group of trade and economic journalists that deals with Peru, Colombia and Panama all needed to be backed by Congress to boost the US economy and further its interests in Latin America.
All three deals have been signed and are awaiting Congressional approval, with Peru's thought likely to be agreed this year.
But Ms Rice focused much of her attention on the deal with Colombia, which faces the most obstacles.
"This is somebody who has cast his lot with partnership with the US and it ought to mean something," Ms Rice said of Mr Uribe, perhaps Mr Bush's closest ally in the Americas.
"It ought to mean that ... when you say that the way to help deliver for the Colombian people is in partnership with the US ... that the US does not turn its back on a good friend."
Colombia was not only important to the US for economic reasons - it is the US's biggest agricultural market - but also for strategic ones, she said.
"It is also a country that has brought itself back, with good leadership, with democratic leadership, from the abyss," she said, comparing the country before Mr Uribe's presidency to "a narco-terrorist failed state".
Brian Pomper, a former Senate trade counsel, said: "It is unusual for the secretary of state to speak so forcefully about the progress of a trade agreement."
Nevertheless, he said: "The Colombia agreement is not going to make it over the finish line in its current form."
Mr Uribe is under increasing pressure at home over a scandal in which more than 40 lawmakers, including senators, governors and mayors, are being investigated by the country's attorney-general and Supreme Court for alleged relationships with paramilitary chiefs and collusion in election fraud. Dozens have been sent to jail.
Mario Uribe, the president's cousin and political ally, last week resigned after accusations that he had conspired with paramilitary groups.
Many US Democrats who oppose the trade deal say Bogotá is not doing enough to prosecute those accused of colluding with the paramilitaries or to dismantle their power structures, in spite of the demobilisation of 31,000 paramilitaries in the past four years.
In a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, Ms Rice argued that the trade deals would help promote a positive model of a pan-American "community".
