Bush's Terror Laws Will Harm US Farm Measure on Cuba Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit source - JosePertierra@aol.com US farm group seeks limits on food embargo measure By Richard Cowan WASHINGTON, Oct 15 (Reuters) - The largest U.S. farm organization is hoping Congress will scale back a food embargo provision inserted into anti-terrorism legislation before it is sent to President George W. Bush for his signature, an official of the group said on Monday. Last week, the House and Senate passed similar versions of legislation, which is mainly designed to give U.S. law enforcement authorities more powers to investigate suspected terrorists operating in the United States. The measure is moving quickly through Congress in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Organization and Pentagon. Included in the House and Senate anti-terrorism bills was a provision stating that a trade law enacted last year does not prohibit future U.S. food embargoes against foreign terrorist organizations, "narcotics entities" or foreign groups involved in missile proliferation. That language represented a compromise worked out between the House, Senate and Bush administration. Some earlier drafts of the legislation contained a more sweeping reversal of the law prohibiting U.S. food embargoes. But Audrae Erickson, international trade policy specialist for the American Farm Bureau, said her organization wants the new language tightened further. Specifically, Erickson said the American Farm Bureau wants the language in the anti-terrorism bill to "sunset" in two years instead of remaining in effect permanently. Erickson also said the American Farm Bureau is concerned over how the legislation will be implemented. For example, she wondered whether special licensing might be required for exporters of U.S. farm commodities to countries harboring terrorist organizations. In letters sent to all members of Congress recently, the American Farm Bureau noted that it supports U.S. efforts to "address these criminal acts" of Sept. 11. But the letter went on to say, "We oppose any provision in the anti-terrorism bill that would impose unilateral sanctions on U.S. agricultural exports without congressional approval." Such an approach, the letter stated, "would be ineffective in today's global marketplace and would raise the cost and availability of food for the people in the sanctioned countries without achieving the intended foreign policy objective." Also, U.S. farmers have long complained that food embargoes do more harm to them than the targeted countries, which find other suppliers for their needs. For several years, U.S. agriculture has worked to limit the federal government's ability to impose food embargoes against countries at odds with U.S. foreign policy. Those efforts were rewarded last year with the enactment of the trade bill limiting the U.S. president's authority to unilaterally impose food and medicine embargoes on countries such as Cuba and North Korea. But some in the administration, even before Sept. 11, have been trying to reclaim some of that power, especially in regard to Afghanistan's ruling Taliban, which Bush has accused of fostering acts of terrorism against the United States. An aide to Rep. George Nethercutt, the Washington Republican who has led efforts to end food embargoes and especially to open U.S. food shipments to Cuba, on Friday said the compromise language "doesn't undermine anything we passed last year. We're satisfied with it." The House and Senate will try to promptly resolve differences between the two versions of the anti-terrorism bill. Bush has asked Congress to send him the legislation "quickly." 15:05 10-15-01 ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytenv-10.16.01-03:47:50-6548