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Candidates Obama and McCain disagree on Colombian FTA agreement in final presidential debate

16 de octubre de 2008

One of the moments where both presidential candidates, democrat Barack Obama and republican John McCain, got most heated up during last night’s debate was when they discussed the FTA agreement with Colombia. Senator McCain said that senator Obama opposed the agreement even though Colombia was one of the strongest U.S. allies in the region, especially by helping them strongly in the fight against drugs that was killing their young. “FTA with Colombia is something that is a no brainer”, McCain said, and also criticized the democrat candidate for not traveling to Colombia or to any other country “south of the border”. Obama defended his position by saying that union workers were still being consistently murdered in the country and that the people responsible for those crimes were not being chased after, and that the U.S. needed to support the respect of human rights. He said he understood the importance of FTA’s, which is why he approved the one with Peru, which he thought, was better structured. McCain rebutted accusing Obama of not approving the treaty with one of the best ally, but instead wanting to sit down and negotiate with Chávez, even though the Venezuelan president has supported the Farc, a terrorist group.