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Colombian free trade pact -- dead?

By Chris Kraul
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The deal may be on life support but Colombian President Alvaro Uribe refuses to declare a bilateral U.S. free-trade agreement dead.

During a state visit to Mexico, Uribe enlisted the support of President Felipe Calderon to lobby on Colombia’s behalf. President Bush has not given up hope, either. But President-elect Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, says a trade bill won’t be on the Democrats’ agenda during the lame-duck congressional session kicking off Monday.

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Democrats’ labor and human rights constituencies are against the pact without major revisions or improvement in Colombia’s human rights record. Still, a Democratic U.S. congressman told The Times that there was a sliver of a chance for the controversial bill. Bush apparently told Obama during his visit to the White House on Monday that he might agree to terms of Democrats’ financial stimulus package if Democrats passed the trade bill. The congressman said that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had not ruled out such a deal.

-- Chris Kraul in Bogota

, left, and Mexican President Felipe Calderon. Credit: EFE

La Plaza
Chris Kraul

Chris Kraul covered South America for the Los Angeles Times from his base in Bogota, Colombia. He joined the paper in 1987 and was business editor of the San Diego edition until it closed in 1992. He then began covering the border and Mexican economies until his assignment to The Times’ Mexico City bureau in 2001. He reopened the paper’s Bogota bureau in 2006. He has also covered the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He is a graduate of the University of South Florida and also has been a reporter at the San Jose Mercury News, San Diego Union-Tribune and the San Diego Business Journal.

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