Obama To Work To Pass Bush Trade Deals - Democrats

Bush lost a showdown with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last year when he tried to force a vote on the Colombia free trade agreement.

U.S. President-elect Barack Obama wants to win approval of stalled free trade deals with Colombia, Panama and South Korea, but further work is needed on two of the pacts, Democratic lawmakers said on Wednesday.

"The president-elect wants to work with Republicans and Democrats to get those trade agreements moving," House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel said during an organizational meeting to outline the panel's priorities for the year.

Earlier this week, outgoing President George W. Bush said failure to win approval of the three agreements was one of the biggest disappointments of his second term.

Bush lost a showdown with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last year when he tried to force a vote on the Colombia free trade agreement, despite concerns that Democrats had raised against violence toward union workers in Colombia.

It was never the case that Colombia was "a bad trade agreement," Rangel told reporters. Rather, the issue was "whether the administration was prepared to insist on the protection of labor leaders in Colombia."

In the case of South Korea, the main issue blocking that pact was the Bush administration's unwillingness to change auto provisions that many Democrats believe favored South Korea's automakers too much, Rangel said.

"If they fought as hard for cars, as they did for beef, we wouldn't have that problem," Rangel said, referring to the strong pressure the Bush administration put on South Korea to open its market to U.S. beef.