MEXICO CITY — The United States and El Salvador this week settled their differences over compliance with the fine print of a trade agreement that threatened to hold up aid to the small Central American country, but the timing of the dispute has become an embarrassment for Washington.
The surge of Central American migrants to the United States over the last few months has been a stark reminder of the poverty and violence they face at home. To some, Washington's haggling over a program to help poor farmers in El Salvador has looked tone-deaf.
At the heart of the dispute is the way the Salvadoran government buys corn and bean seeds for subsistence farmers. Washington had objected to moves to favor small, local seed producers.
But on Wednesday, after articles about the dispute appeared in the Washington news media and 16 members of the House of Representatives called on Secretary of State John Kerry not to use changes to the food program as a condition for aid, the United States Embassy in El Salvador said that the dispute had been resolved.
The embassy said that the Salvadoran government had committed to conducting future purchases of seeds in "a transparent and competitive mechanism," but it did not explain what the government had promised to change.
In 2012, the Salvadoran government excluded foreign seed companies from a program known as the Family Farming Plan in an effort to encourage local producers. A subsidiary of Monsanto, the world's largest seed company, had been a major supplier.
In January, El Salvador changed the program to include foreign companies again, but the United States trade representative said that the process was neither transparent nor competitive.
Lawmakers in the United States said the Obama administration was holding the aid hostage.
"We are particularly troubled by U.S. authorities' insistence upon a condition that would hamper the government's national food security program," said the legislators, led by Representatives Mark Pocan, Democrat of Wisconsin, and Mike Honda, Democrat of California.
The resolution does not yet free up $277 million approved in September by the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a United States aid agency. Washington is still waiting for El Salvador to tighten controls on money laundering.
source : http://rss.nytimes.com/c/34625/f/640316/s/3c278d9e/sc/1/l/0L0Snytimes0N0C20A140C0A70C0A40Cbusiness0Cinternational0Cel0Esalvador0Eends0Edispute0Ewith0Eus0Eover0Eseeds0Bhtml0Dpartner0Frss0Gemc0Frss/story01.htm
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