Democratic lawmakers returning from Colombia last night said they were impressed with the "extraordinary" change in that country over the past five years, but were undecided whether to support a free trade deal.
"There still are some serious questions being raised by organized labor in the United States and by the overwhelming amount of labor in Colombia and (by) human rights groups," said Rep. Eliot Engel, a New York Democrat who chairs a Western Hemisphere subcommittee in the House of Representatives.
At the same time, the charges those groups make about continued violence against labor leaders and "impunity" for past crimes differ sharply with the progress the Colombian government says it is making on those issues, he said.
"I almost feel like I want to get everybody in a room and kind of bang heads together. ... These are complex problems, they're very difficult, but I think if people really want to come out with a solution they can," Mr Engel said.
Mr Engel was one of nine Democrats with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on the trip to Colombia to see the changes in Colombia after being nearly wrecked by narco-trafficking and decades of civil war.
Several of the lawmakers spoke with reporters on the trip back to the United States on Rice's plane.
"The hole that the Colombians have dug themselves out of over the last five or six years is extraordinary," said Rep. Ron Klein, a Florida Democrat. "But I think many of us still have questions about the labor issue, the human rights issues," that need to be answered before supporting the pact, he said.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has refused the Bush administration's request to schedule a vote on the agreement until she sees more evidence Colombia is serious about stopping murders of trade unionists and putting their killers in jail.
Many are believed to be former paramilitaries who were aligned with Colombian government in the long battle against rebel groups.
Murders of trade unionists have fallen from about 186 in 2002 to 38 in 2007, according to a Bush administration fact sheet.
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe told the US lawmakers the country was implementing legal reforms that would make it easier bring cases and get convictions, said Rep. Jane Harman, a California Democrat.