Bush tells Salvadoran leader trade pact must wait.
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12 July 2004
18:05
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WASHINGTON, July 12 (Reuters) - A Congressional vote on a controversial free trade pact between the United States and five Central American nations will have to wait until after U.S. presidential elections, President George W. Bush told his Salvadoran counterpart, Antonio Saca, on Monday.
Bush has delayed sending the U.S.-Central American Free Trade Agreement, or CAFTA, to Congress even though the negotiations concluded in December and similar deals with Australia and Morocco have already been sent to Congress for ratification.
U.S. officials have said before that Congressional approval was unlikely before the November vote, but this is the first time Bush has confirmed this to a Central American leader.
"(Bush) understands that CAFTA is important, that there is an electoral process in the United States and that evidently it will have to wait until this moment passes before taking up the CAFTA issue (in Congress)," Saca told reporters after meeting Bush at the White House.
The Democratic Party and unions say the CAFTA needs to do more to protect worker and environmental rights.
Besides El Salvador and the United States, CAFTA includes Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic, which joined the group in May. CAFTA is the second largest export market in Latin America for the United States, after Mexico.
This was Saca's first visit to Bush after taking office on June 1. Saca is a member of the pro-U.S. Arena party.
El Salvador's economy is heavily tied to the United States. Salvadoran immigrants sent over $2 billion in remittances to relatives back home in 2003, a crucial economic lifeline for a country where about half the population lives in poverty.
Saca said Central America needed CAFTA to compete with China. "We cannot compete with the low wages in China, where workers make one dollar a day," he said. "That is impossible."
