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Tuesday, 26 January 2010 09:42 |
Nasdaq / Dow Jones
January 22, 2010
Nasdaq / Dow Jones
By Matthew Bristow
January 22, 2010
www.nasdaq.com
BOGOTA -(Dow Jones)- The U.S. Congress is unlikely to ratify a free-trade agreement with Colombia this year, the U.S. ambassador to Colombia said Friday.
"Congress has never approved a free-trade agreement during an election year," William Brownfield told a conference of U.S. ambassadors in the region, Colombian newspaper La Republica reported. "Moreover, there are various sectors that have taken strong positions against this project."
Brownfield added that President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton both support the agreement.
The U.S. Embassy in Bogota confirmed Brownfield had made the remarks.
Colombia's record on labor rights has been a major obstacle to ratification of the agreement in the Democrat-controlled U.S. Congress.
The U.S. labor movement remains strongly opposed to any free-trade agreement with Colombia, said Adam Isacson, a Colombia analyst at the Center for International Policy, a think tank based in Washington, D.C.
"This is why they drew a line in the sand on Colombia, but they didn't fight the Peru [free trade] agreement as hard," Isacson said. "They don't like the [ free trade] model, but they would let smaller, less controversial countries go," he added.
Thirty-nine members of labor unions were killed in Colombia in 2009, down from 49 in 2008, according to Colombia's National Union School.
Antiunion violence has fallen sharply since 2003, when 101 union members were killed, as right-wing paramilitary groups demobilized. Despite this, Colombia continues to have the highest rate of slayings of union members in the world, according to Human Rights Watch.
"If they [the Colombian authorities] were to get some verdicts and punish some of those responsible, even in a couple of dozen exemplary cases, I think that a lot of the labor movement's arguments would be weakened. But they really haven't made that progress," Isacson said.
The U.S. Congress also has free-trade agreements with Korea and Panama awaiting ratification.
-By Matthew Bristow, Dow Jones Newswires. +57-3142983277; colombia@ dowjones.com
http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/stock-market-news-story.aspx?storyid=201001221608dowjonesdjonline000613&title=congress-wont-pass-us-colombia-free-trade-pact-in-10us-envoy&sms_ss=email
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