February 7, 2003
The Bush Administration has decided to forego an appeal of a federal court ruling mandating public release of draft negotiating texts used in negotiations with Chile towards a free trade agreement. The deadline for the appeal in the suit brought by environmental groups was Jan. 30.
As a result, the Office of U.S. Trade Representative is required to release texts and proposals that were shared with Chile that were subject to a Freedom Of Information Act filing by Friends of the Earth, the Center for International Environmental Law and Public Citizen. The documents were being sent to Earthjustice, the counsel for the environmental groups, late last week.
However, the documents subject to the court-ordered release do not include the final texts agreed by both sides or key U.S. proposals on investment protections or environmental commitments, since those were tabled after the February 2002 cut-off date under the suit, an environmental source said. Environmentalists challenged the denial of their FOIA request in November 2001.
The groups will likely file a second freedom of information request for release of the final texts of both the Chile and Singapore free trade deals as initialed in December of 2002, an environmental source said. USTR officials have given conflicting signals on whether or not the final agreement will be released before it is signed by both parties: some have said that the texts will be made public after signature, while others signal they will be available to the public before then.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Circuit had ruled in December that draft text shared by the U.S. with Chile was not covered by the exemption under the FOIA for documents subject to internal government deliberations. One environmental source speculated that USTR could now try to classify negotiating text under the national security exemption of the FOIA to prevent subsequent efforts to force release of documents.
Separately, the Administration informed the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy and Friends of the Earth that their representatives were no longer going to serve on the Trade and Environment Policy Advisory Committee, sources said. The Administration is also considering a number of additional appointments to the TEPAC, including a representative of the conservative Hudson Institute, sources said.
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