Washington Post: In Colombia, a Washington Sales Pitch (on free trade)

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/18/AR2007101802228.html?nav=rss_print/asection

Bush Administration Leads U.S. Lawmakers on Visit Aimed at Free Trade Pact

By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, October 19, 2007; Page A15

MEDELLIN, Colombia -- The U.S. congressmen were speedily transported in vans with tinted windows, their convoy escorted by policemen on motorcycles who ensured that no car ventured close. When the lawmakers stepped out, guards carrying M-16s watched wearily, whispering into microphones on their sleeves.

What the congressional delegation was told in Medellin, however, is that this city is no longer among the most dangerous in the world. In fact, its recovery has been "nothing short of a revolution," one American official said.


Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), who described himself as undecided on the Colombia trade accord, talks with Gen. Freddy Padilla, commander of the country's armed forces, after arriving in Nueva Bellavista. (Juan Forero - Twp)

For the six lawmakers, led by the U.S. commerce secretary, the story of Medellin was presented last weekend as part of a larger success story in Colombia. It's one that the Bush administration is vigorously selling in Washington as it tries to prod Democrats, and not a few Republicans, into supporting a free trade pact with President ¿lvaro Uribe's government, the United States' closest ally in Latin America.

"Everyone has a point of view or a perception about Colombia, but this is too important of a decision to make without being here," Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez said. "This is a total administration effort. The president is totally involved."

In the early months of the Bush administration, the intense focus on a free trade agreement with a single country would have been seen as decidedly unambitious. The objective then was to adopt a plan by the Clinton administration to create a hemisphere-wide, 34-nation trade bloc stretching from Alaska to Argentina, a pact President Bush once called a "vital link for prosperity."

Now, fighting hostility to trade in a Congress controlled by Democrats and suspicion in a region where Washington-inspired market orthodoxy has fallen out of favor, the administration is instead lobbying hard for individual pacts with three relatively minor economies in Latin America: Panama, Peru and Colombia. It is in the last, though, that the administration is being most tenacious -- playing tour guide for delegations of undecided lawmakers who will be ferried here in the coming weeks.

FULL story at link.