LAWMAKERS PUSH ANDEAN TRADE PACT

WASHINGTON -- The head of the White House anti-drug office joined lawmakers
Tuesday in urging Congress to save a trade policy aimed at helping Colombia
and other South American countries reduce their reliance on cocaine
production and trafficking.

"The time to act is now, the urgency is real," said Sen. Bob Graham,
sponsor of legislation to extend the Andean Trade Preference Act that since
1991 has offered low tariffs for selected products from Colombia, Bolivia,
Ecuador and Peru.

The act expired last December, and a Bush administration deferral of higher
duties runs out on May 16. The high tariffs that would be reimposed after
that could be crippling to Colombia's fresh-cut flower industry, which has
created 150,000 new jobs in that country since 1991, and Peru's asparagus
business, the source of 40,000 new jobs since 1991.

"These people are going to get hammered if Congress doesn't act," U.S.
Trade Representative Robert Zoellick said Monday of Colombian flower
growers, who send 85 percent of their exports to the United States.

"This is a bill that works," John Walters, director of the Office of
National Drug Control Policy, said at a Senate news conference Tuesday.
"It's a support for the development of democracy as well as drug control."

"Let there be no doubt," said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. "The Andean Trade
Preference Expansion Act is important to U.S. national security and to the
security of the democratically elected governments in the Andean region."

Renewal of the trade act easily passed the House last November, but action
in the Senate has been delayed because Democratic leaders have decided to
combine it with two more controversial issues -- giving the president broad
authority to negotiate new trade agreements and expanding a program to
retrain and sustain trade-displaced workers.

The Senate is expected to take up that trade package next week, but
progress could be slow and any bill that is passed would still have to be
reconciled with the House.

Graham's bill does face some opposition from textile state senators because
it would extend duty-free, quota-free treatment to apparel from the four
Andean countries as long as they used yarn and fabric made in the United
States. He said that provision was necessary to put the Andean states on a
par with Mexico and Caribbean nations that already enjoy such treatment.

The House-passed bill also included duty-free status for canned tuna, a
measure that would help Ecuador compete against canned tuna from Mexico.

On the Net: Graham: http://graham.senate.gov/