Benitez denounces US pressures

[NewsWhore]

Osmar Benitez, the executive director of the Dominican Agro-business Council (JAD) has said that the United States has been pressuring Dominican officials to modify some of the points of the DR-CAFTA agreement. He said that these were some of the points that they were not able to introduce during the discussions and negotiations surrounding the agreement itself. Benitez said that this is the reason that DR-CAFTA has not started up. As reported in Hoy, Benitez said that this week's meeting between President Fernandez and George W. Bush might open to way to a solution of the impasse. According to Benitez, the central issue revolves around the pharmaceutical industry. According to the JAD officer, the US wants to introduce language that would be prejudicial to the local pharmaceutical industry as well as limiting the ability of the Dominican government to set the schedule of entry dates for the agree-to quotas of imports. One particular case is rice, where the US wants an open import clause that will allow imports of rice when the market demands it, but, according to Benitez, "we are not obliged to yield to this." As he explained the issue to the reporters, Benitez said that the Dominican obligation is to concede the importation of between 8,000 and 10,000 tons of rice, "but we (the DR) are not obliged to accept this rice when they (the US) want to ship it."

More... (http://www.dr1.com/index.html#3)