Posted on Wed, May. 02, 2007
Bush praises Colombia's Uribe as `friend'
BY PABLO BACHELET
pbachelet@MiamiHerald.com
SAUL LOEB/AFP-GETTY IMAGES
President Bush listens as Colombian President Alvaro Uribe
speaks to the media Wednesday on the south lawn of the
White House. Uribe is in Washington to push a free-trade
pact between the United States and Colombia.
~snip~
Many Democrats, the AFL-CIO and human rights groups want Congress to reject a free-trade agreement over human rights issues.
(snip)
But even the administration has had doubts over abuses in Colombia.
The State Department held up for almost a year a rights certification to free $55 million in aid to Colombian armed forces over concerns the government was not aggressive enough in prosecuting members of the armed forces accused of massacres or links with paramilitary groups. When the State Department last month awarded the certification, Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who sits on the Appropriations Committee, put a hold on the money until his office received an explanation from the State Department.
Uribe will do much of the explaining during his three-day visit.
He is meeting with Democratic Reps. Charles Rangel of New York and Sander Levin of Michigan, key members of the House Ways and Means Committee, which oversees trade matters, and John Sweeney, the head of the AFL-CIO, which has hinted it might accept agreements with Panama and Peru if labor language is included but not Colombia because too many union leaders are killed there.
(snip/...)
http://www.miamiherald.com/579/story/93864.html