CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS. April 18, 2008 – 2:05 p.m. By Timothy R. Homan

Colombia’s top officials have received no assurances that the pending free-trade agreement will come up for a vote this year, following last week’s House vote to suspend action on the pact’s implementing legislation.

Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos Calderón, who is in Washington to meet with business groups to garner support for the trade deal, said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has not made any promises to Colombia that Congress will vote on the trade pact (HR 5724) this year.

“She’s said in private what she has said publicly,” Santos said in an interview Friday.

Pelosi has said the measure won’t be considered until the White House works with Democrats to help U.S. workers, struggling homeowners and the economy.

Pelosi initiated a change to House rules (H Res 1092) that indefinitely suspended action on the trade deal after President Bush ignored her advice and on April 8 sent Congress the implementing legislation. The rules change was adopted April 10 by a largely party-line vote of 224-195, with one member voting “present.”

The resolution suspends two provisions of 1974 Trade Act (PL 93-618) that established fast-track trade negotiating rules. The Colombia deal was negotiated in November 2006 under the latest version of that law (PL 107-210), which expired last year.

The fast-track law bars amendments and requires that both chambers act on a pact within 90 legislative days after the implementing legislation has been sent to Congress. But the law also specifies that the procedures and timetable are rules of the House and Senate that can be changed by either chamber.

Colombians Still Hopeful

Unlike administration officials, who say the agreement is dead unless Pelosi schedules an up-or-down vote on the deal, Santos said the pact is very much alive.

He said the state of play now “will require the administration and the U.S. Congress to find a negotiated solution to this.”

“At this moment it has become a domestic issue [for the United States],” Santos said, alluding to the election-year maneuvering by Pelosi on one side and the administration on the other.

He added that he doesn’t foresee lawmakers asking Colombia to make more concessions in the trade deal.

“Very clearly, Colombia has done the homework,” he said, referring to the decrease in violence against union activists during President Alvaro Uribe’s administration.

Still, he acknowledged there is room for improvement. “You still have abuses by the armed forces,” he said.

Uribe and Santos were elected to office in 2002, a year when 196 trade unionists were killed, according to the Colombian government. That number was reduced to 26 in 2007.

Some labor groups dispute those figures, saying as many as 39 trade unionists were killed last year, and more than a dozen so far in 2008, putting the country on pace to reverse its downward trend.

Most House Democrats and labor groups oppose the trade agreement, saying the Colombian government has not taken sufficient steps to reduce violence against union members. Republicans counter that Colombia has worked hard to crack down on right-wing paramilitary groups blamed for much of the violence.

“Until our brothers and sisters can exercise core worker rights without fear of intimidation, threat or murder, we cannot seriously consider passing a trade agreement with Colombia,” AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said April 15. “The test of trade should not be how much profit it generates.”

Upon implementation, the Colombia trade deal would eliminate tariffs on more than 80 percent of Colombia-bound exports of industrial and consumer goods.

Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru already receive duty-free treatment on many of their U.S.-bound exports because of recently renewed trade preferences for the Andean nations (PL 110-191).