Bush to send Vietnam trade bill to Congress
WASHINGTON - President George W. Bush will ask Congress to ratify a historic US-Vietnam trade pact next week, after
months of delays which have frustrated Hanoi and US free-traders, congressional aides said Friday.
The pact is expected to be sent to Congress on June 4th, and work to push it through both the House of
Representatives and the Senate will begin almost immediately, a Democratic aide said, speaking on condition of
anonymity.
The agreement, signed by the Clinton administration last year, has been held up while new US Trade
Representative Robert Zoellick set his priorities, prompting regular warnings of the dangers of delay by
Vietnam.
Indications that movement on the deal was imminent came as Bush on Friday granted Vietnam a one-year
extension of limited trade privileges already in force. Congress has 60 days to mount a challenge to Bush's
grant of the so-called Jackson-Vanik waiver.
Until the trade deal is ratified, Vietnam is barred from normal trade relations with the United States, but US
businesses there can claim export guarantees or government credits under an amendment to a 1974 Trade Act.
The lack of action on the pact coincided with mounting criticism in the United States over Vietnam's human
rights record, and a souring of relations between two former foes, which had reached a high point during
former president Bill Clinton's visit to the country last year.
A decision to move on the trade pact is understood to have followed a verbal agreement between Zoellick and
influential Democratic Party Senator John Kerry.
Under the deal, Kerry agreed to drop opposition to several nominees for deputy posts in the US Trade
Representative's office in return for action on the trade deal, of which he is a strong supporter.
Zoellick's spokesman Richard Mills would not divulge exactly when the pact would be sent to Congress, saying
only: "We anticipate that we will send up Vietnam soon."
The accord, finally reached in 2000 after years of negotiations, opens Vietnamese markets to US businesses
and goods in return for a cut in tariffs on Vietnam's exports to the United States.
It is the highlight of a gradual process of normalising ties between two former bitter enemies.
Kerry described the process of building a normal modern trading relationship with Vietnam as "one of the final
battles we must fight to end the war in Vietnam."
Moving beyond the annual Jackson-Vanik waiver review process would help the United States cement its role
as an economic leader in Southeast Asia, he said.
"We have an opportunity to ... build a long-term relationship with Vietnam that's in the interests of both nations,
and which will continue to secure the United States as a world leader in the global economy, particularly in
Southeast Asia."
Extension of the so-called Jackson-Vanik waiver is likely to be challenged by Vietnam's opponents in
Congress, but a similar bid failed in the House of Representatives last year by a vote of 331 to 92.
Agence France Press - June 1st, 2001.
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