The Colombia FTA is being held up because of the human rights violations there.  Bill Clinton promised Uribe, in 2005, to help with passage.  Bush has made this FTA a high priority, but it is unlikely to be passed.  He presented it to the House under grandfathered Fast Track rules, but Pelosi refused to move.  

The AFL-CIO has protested unionist killings there.  Human rights groups have similarly protested.

But the Colombian army continues questionable killings.

Colombia’s government, the Bush administration’s top ally in Latin America, has been buffeted by the killings of Mr. Oviedo and dozens of other young, impoverished men and women whose cases have come to light in recent weeks. Some were vagrants, others street vendors or manual laborers. But their fates were often the same: being catalogued as insurgents or criminal gang members and killed by the armed forces.

Uribe said he was making progress.  But it seems not.  Many question whether Uribe is part of the problem.

The deaths have called into question the depth of recent strides against the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, and have begun to haunt the military hierarchy.

On Wednesday, President Álvaro Uribe’s government announced that it had fired more than two dozen officers and soldiers — including three generals — in connection with the deaths of Mr. Oviedo and 10 other young men from Soacha, whose bodies were recently discovered in unmarked graves in a distant combat zone. The purge came after an initial shake-up Friday, when the army command relieved three colonels of their duties.

Many FTA's are pushed on foreign policy grounds.  Colombia is Exhibit A right now.  We give away chunks of our economy, and give away our domestic market to foreign companies, based upon the foreign policy establishment's desire to please and attract allies.  The logic is somewhat internally consistent and economically disastrous.

Trade policy should be based upon the economic needs of our nation. 

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