The US Senate cleared the way to granting trade privileges to Laos Friday and separately passed a resolution condemning the tiny Southeast Asian nation's human rights record. The provision was tacked onto a broader trade bill that had been stalled due to controversy over granting "normal trade relations" status to Laos, a move sought by President George W. Bush's administration.
It had not been part of separate versions of the bill that earlier passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, but was added at the last minute by a panel of lawmakers who crafted a final version of the legislation in a "conference committee."
Bills coming out of the "Senate-House conference committees" are put to a 'yes' or 'no' vote and cannot be amended.
"Frankly, folks did by night what they could not get done in broad daylight and that's too bad," said Senator Norm Coleman, calling the last-minute move "a subversion of the process."
"There are strong bipartisan objections to granting normalised trade relations with Laos in both the House and the Senate and so there was a subversion of the process to add this provision to a very popular and, frankly, unstoppable bill," said Coleman, author of the rights resolution also adopted Friday.
"The United States Senate is on record condemning Laos for its abysmal human rights record and sending a strong message to that country to shape up and join the civilised world," he said.
"I will be watching Laos closely as a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, and unless there is meaningful progress on the human rights front expect the issue of trade relations to Laos to be revisited in the United States Senate."
The Laos military has been accused of using heavy-handed, often brutal tactics to eliminate ethnic minority guerrillas, predominantly Hmong tribesmen waging an ineffective, low-level insurgency for nearly three decades since being abandoned by their US sponsors at the end of the Vietnam War.
Aside from Laos, North Korea and Cuba are the only countries denied the normal trade relations or NTR status by the United States. Total annual US-Laos bilateral trade is a paltry 10 million dollars.
Washington first attempted to reinstate Laos' NTR status in 1997 but it was shelved following an uproar from rights groups and much of the estimated 300,000 Lao community in the United States.
In March, a dozen legislators reintroduced the NTR proposal at the House and the Senate, saying extension of such treatment would assist communist-ruled Laos in developing its economy based on free market principles.
They said that Laos, among the poorest countries in Asia, had co-operated with the United States in the global war on terrorism and drug trafficking and the accounting for American servicemen and civilians still missing from the Vietnam War.
The Miscellaneous Trade and Technical Corrections Act of 2004 lifts tariffs on a number of products that are not produced in the United States. It now goes to Bush for signing.
Comments
Comments are closed.