A new-old hurdle has cropped up in the process of getting the DR-CAFTA agreement approved in the US Congress. Senator Kent Conrad (D-North Dakota, www.senate.cov/~conrad) announced that he was going to introduce an amendment to the DR-CAFTA legislation that would remove sugar from the discussions. Yesterday, Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, and the Under-Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere, Roger Noriega, urged the Senate to ratify the bill. Rice said that approval of the bill would “advance the cause of liberty in the Americas.” Conrad, who represents one of the major sugar producing states of the United States, sugar from sugar beets, that is, introduced his amendment and effectively paralyzed the deliberations of the Senate Finance Committee. According to the story in the El Caribe, an official from the Commerce Department said that Conrad wants to introduce an amendment that would exclude sugar from the DR-CAFTA legislation unless certain conditions that are not possible at this time are met. Until enough votes are rounded up in the Finance Committee to defeat Conrad’s motion, all work on the legislation is halted.
The Wall Street Journal also mentions that debates in Costa Rica seem to indicate that the agreement might not pass their legislature, either. According to reports coming from Costa Rica, the Assembly might not take a vote on the bill until after the presidential election next February. So far only El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemalaa have approved the text.