RENEWING A LATIN TRADE PACT

The Bush White House held its first state dinner last September, in honor
of President Vicente Fox of Mexico. A week later, Secretary of State Colin
Powell was sitting down to breakfast in Lima with Peru's president,
Alejandro Toledo, when he heard about the terrorist attacks on New York and
Washington. Ever since then, the administration's pledge to make relations
with Latin America a top priority has been tested, understandably enough,
by the need to focus on the war on terrorism.

The White House announcement last week that the president would visit
Mexico, Peru and El Salvador in March is a welcome sign that the United
States has not forsaken its broader foreign policy agenda. Congress ought
to reinforce this message by renewing the Andean Trade Preference Act,
which was inexcusably allowed to lapse in December.

Congress passed the Trade Preference Act under the first President Bush in
1991. This trade benefit, exempting certain goods from Colombia, Peru,
Bolivia and Ecuador from any tariffs, was an offshoot of the war on drugs,
an incentive offered to help wean the hemisphere's major coca-growing
nations from the drug trade. By building up Colombia's flower industry --
more than 80 percent of the fresh roses sold in this country are Colombian
imports -- and boosting Peru's agricultural sector, the act showed that the
war on drugs could be waged with more than guns.

Unlike many worthy trade initiatives that are opposed by domestic
constituencies, the Andean trade benefit has proven relatively
uncontroversial in Washington. It was extended for five years in 1996, and
Congress, prodded by the Bush administration, seemed ready to extend it
again late last year before it was sidetracked. The House voted to renew
it, but in the Senate the measure was attached to the controversial
stimulus legislation. Now it will be packaged with other trade items,
including President Bush's request for a freer hand in negotiating agreements.

Further delay in reinstating the Andean region's duty-free status for
certain products could not come at a worse time. The countries have gone to
great lengths to eradicate coca crops, Colombia's struggle with its
guerrilla groups is intensifying and Peru is eager to consolidate its
democracy after Alberto Fujimori's corrupt rule finally ended in December 2000.

It would seem an odd time for the United States to withdraw an economic
benefit so crucial to the region's hopes for the future. Moreover, a
failure to renew the uncontroversial benefit would signal to the rest of
Latin America that the United States is not serious about pursuing a more
ambitious hemispheric trade pact in the future. The Senate needs to ensure
that Mr. Bush does not arrive in Lima empty-handed next month.