Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, December 2, 1994 TAG: 9412020068
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The Senate gave final congressional approval to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the most sweeping rewrite of global trading rules in four decades, on a vote of 76-24. Virginia's Senators, Democrat Charles Robb and Republican John Warner, voted to approve the agreement.
The Senate had voted 68-32 just minutes earlier to waive its own budget rules and remove a key procedural hurdle to passage. Sixty votes were needed in the earlier vote.
President Clinton, badly in need of a congressional victory to lift his battered fortunes following the November elections, had worked throughout the day to convince wavering lawmakers to support the deal.
Retiring Democratic Leader George Mitchell, D-Maine, noted that the vote was the last one to be taken by the 103rd Congress and the last he would ever take in the Senate. He said he was proud that his last vote as a senator was ``on a matter that will have significance for generations to come.''
On the crucial budget waiver vote, the accord was supported by 31 Republicans and 37 Democrats and was opposed by 15 Republicans and 17 Democrats.
Republican Leader Robert Dole, R-Kan., said his office still was getting up to 2,000 calls a day protesting the agreement. Dole said he had decided to support the agreement because the alternative of defeat would be far worse.
The 124-nation trade agreement cuts tariffs by an average of 38 percent worldwide, and for the first time extends GATT rules to such areas as reduction of trade-distorting agriculture subsidies, lowering trade barriers in service industries such as banking and clamping down on copyright piracy.
It also creates a more powerful World Trade Organization to referee trade disputes and eliminates the one-country veto that a losing nation could use to block an adverse ruling.
by CNB