[Peace-discuss] Admin's real position on Cuba

[C. G. Estabrook]

[And again...]

	The New York Times
	April 21, 2009
	In Shift, Obama Doesn’t Plan to Reopen Nafta Talks
	By BRIAN KNOWLTON

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration said on Monday that it had no plans to 
reopen negotiations on the North American Free Trade Agreement to revise its 
labor and environmental provisions, as then-Senator Barack Obama promised to do 
during his presidential campaign.

“The president has said we will look at all of our options, but I think they can 
be addressed without having to reopen the agreement,” said Ronald Kirk, the 
United States trade representative.

Mr. Kirk spoke in a conference call with reporters after returning from the 
Summit of the Americas in Trinidad over the weekend. He said President Obama 
conferred there with the leaders of Mexico and Canada — the other parties to the 
free trade agreement — and “they are all of the mind we should look for 
opportunities to strengthen Nafta.”

Though a formal review of the pact has yet to be completed, Mr. Kirk noted, both 
Mr. Obama and President Felipe Calderón of Mexico have said that “they don’t 
believe we have to reopen the agreement now.”

In particular, Mexico, whose exports have grown hugely since the agreement was 
ratified in 1992, has little interest in such a renegotiation.

Mr. Obama was not the only candidate for president who promised during the 
campaign to renegotiate the accord, a politically popular position in some 
electorally important Midwestern states that have lost thousands of 
manufacturing jobs. His chief Democratic rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is 
now secretary of state, did so as well.

Thea Lee, the policy director for the A.F.L.-C.I.O., said that her organization 
would have preferred “more definitive” language about labor concerns, but that 
it was understandable for a new administration to start its review with a less 
confrontational approach.

Since the election, neither the president nor the secretary of state has said 
much about trying to move Nafta’s side agreements on labor and the environment — 
which are subject to limited enforcement — into the main part of the trade pact, 
a potentially tangled and protracted process.

Mr. Kirk, the former mayor of Dallas, who is known as a strong advocate of free 
trade, said that the administration also planned rapid reviews of pending 
agreements with Colombia and Panama.

He said that Colombia had made “remarkable progress” in reducing violence — 
attacks against labor advocates had been a crucial sticking point — but that 
other issues remained to be resolved, and he promised to consult intensively 
with Congress on the matter.

The Bush administration signed the agreement with Colombia in November 2006. But 
Congressional Democrats and American labor groups say they want the Colombian 
government to do more to stop antilabor violence and hold perpetrators 
accountable. Mr. Obama said similar things during the campaign.

Regarding Panama, Mr. Kirk said that differences on labor standards and the 
question of Panama “possibly being a tax haven,” needed resolution. President 
Obama and Mr. Kirk met with leaders of Panama and Colombia during the Trinidad 
summit meeting.


C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> [Doesn't this look like the usual, predictable Obama: fake left, go right?]
> 
>     Hopes dim for US-Cuba thaw
>     by Marc Burleigh – Mon Apr 20, 4:01 am ET
> 
> PORT OF SPAIN (AFP) – President Barack Obama dampened hopes of a quick 
> end to a long-standing US trade embargo on Cuba as Havana's exclusion 
> from a regional summit scuppered agreement on a joint declaration.
> Although Obama made the historic acknowledgement that Washington's 
> half-century policy towards Cuba "hasn't worked," he told the Americas 
> summit in Trinidad and Tobago on Sunday that it would not be modified 
> any time soon and urged Cuba to give its people more freedoms.
> "We're not going to change that policy overnight," Obama told a news 
> conference at the end of the gathering, which brought together 34 heads 
> of state...