Lima, Dec 7, 2005.- The Secretary General of the Andean Community, Ambassador Allan Wagner Tizón, urged the highest-level United States authorities to bear Bolivia’s sensitivities in mind, particularly in the case of soybeans and their byproducts, in its current negotiation of a Free Trade Agreement with Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.

Ambassador Wagner made this appeal in diplomatic notes addressed to the Secretary of State and to the United States Trade Representative, Condoleezza Rice and Robert Portman, respectively.

Similar communications to this effect had been sent previously by the CAN Secretary General to the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, of Trade and of Agriculture of Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.

In those notes, Ambassador Wagner Tizón explained that he was making this appeal at the express request of the President of Bolivia, Eduardo Rodríguez Veltzé, who, in a meeting last Thursday, expressed his deep concern over the possible damage to Bolivia if the Andean-US FTA places soybeans and their byproducts in the basket of products for short-term tariff reduction.

"For Bolivia, it is essential for the tariff reduction period for soybeans and their byproducts to be as long as possible, in order to give Bolivian producers enough time to enhance the productivity and competitiveness of those products through complementarity arrangements with Andean and South American countries,” Wagner pointed out in his note to Condoleezza Rice and Robert Portman.

"The situation --he stressed-- is vitally important to Bolivia because a negative impact on its exports of soybeans and their byproducts to the Andean market may be very detrimental to that country’s economic, social and political sustainability."

Bolivia, it should be recalled, is involved in negotiating an Andean FTA with the United States as an observer.