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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (97432)	5/4/2003 9:41:07 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Australia, U.S. May Agree Free Trade Pact This Year, Bush Says By Morag MacKinnon Here ya go, Mq. Maybe we will start getting better prices on NZ lamb if you guys can ship it through Australia. This is the kind of "one on one" free trade agreements I love. Crawford, Texas, May 3 (Bloomberg) -- Australia and the U.S. may by year's end reach agreement on a free trade accord and submit it to the U.S. Congress for approval, U.S. President George W. Bush said. Bush, after his first meeting with Australian Prime Minister John Howard since the start of the Iraq war, said he is ``firmly committed to'' to the treaty. The two leaders also discussed Middle East peace, operations in Iraq and North Korea's efforts to develop nuclear weapons, they said at a joint news conference. Howard has been pushing for a free-trade agreement with the U.S., Australia's biggest trading partner after Japan. Annual trade between the two nations is worth about A$33 billion ($21 billion), with Australia having a A$13 billion deficit. ``The idea is to try to get this thing done by the end of the year,'' Bush said. ``I believe we can get it done.'' Bush, who hosted Howard on an overnight say on Bush's ranch in Texas, also praised Australia's role in the war. Australia's government said a free-trade agreement would be worth A$4 billion in extra annual sales for its businesses. Australian Trade Minister Mark Vaile and executives from 12 companies spent this week in the U.S. lobbying for a share of the initial $680 million of reconstruction work in Iraq. Vaile also met U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman and Commerce Secretary Don Evans to discuss Australia's role in assisting Iraq's food industry. Australia is seeking to protect its share of wheat sales to Iraq, its third-biggest market for grain. Exporter AWB Ltd. sells more than A$600 million of grain a year to Iraq under the United Nations' oil-for-food program. Vaile said he believed Iraq's wheat imports would grow to more than the current level of 2.2 million tons annually. Howard has arrived in New York for a meeting with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan where he will discuss the rebuilding of Iraq and the destruction of weapons of mass destruction. He will then travel to London to meet U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair. quote.bloomberg.com