January 30, 2001 
Bush Urged to Support Free Trade

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Uruguay's ambassador urged the Bush administration Tuesday to support free trade worldwide and to ``deal seriously'' with the drug problem.

``Make up your mind if Latin America is important to you or not,'' Hugo Fernandez Faingold, a former vice president of the South American country, told the new administration.

Long a supporter of free trade, Uruguay more than offset the income it lost to the North American Free Trade Association -- a three-nation grouping of the United States, Canada and Mexico -- through trade with other members of Mercosur, a 10-year-old South American trade bloc of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, Fernandez said.

Uruguay welcomes American corporations as it does all foreign companies, but they will find workers in the country earn about 50 percent of what Americans are paid. Instead, he said, American companies go to Nicaragua and hire workers for 16 cents an hour.

The ambassador, a graduate of Columbia College in 1968, spoke at a luncheon of the college club of Washington. A social democrat and a member of his country's Colorado party, Faingold said the way income is distributed in Uruguay results in a per capita income of $6,800 a year and a smaller gap between rich and poor than in the United States.

``The government is not absent from what happens to people,'' he said of his country's long commitment to problems of the poor.

This may slow growth, Fernandez said, ``but it has produced a society that is better off than others,'' with unlimited access to university schooling, a country that is safe to travel in and a rich and diverse culture.

Despite an exodus of talent -- Australia sent planes to cart away professionals and Switzerland attracted thousands of nurses -- there is a physician for every 350 Uruguayans, causing a surplus of 3,000 to 3,500 doctors, he said.

Turning to the Bush administration, Fernandez called for freer and better trading terms. Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who sent a congratulatory message to Bush last month, has said Mercosur wants to see a planned Free Trade Area of the Americas established by 2005.

On narcotics, Fernandez said he did not support legalization, but he called for a ``more flexible'' approach. The United States, he said, provides 90 percent of the demand for narcotics. ``Dry up demand by making drugs not such a good business,'' the ambassador said.