The United States decided on Friday to postpone the enforcement of a free trade agreement with Central America and the Dominican Republic (CAFTA-DR), Mexican media reported.

U.S. trade authorities said in Washington that they plan to delay the enforcement for one or two months.

The governments that signed the CAFTA-DR had decided to start enforcing the agreement on the first day of 2006, but various delays in paperwork led to the postponement.

"The United States will take CAFTA-DR into effect in a progressive way as the countries make sufficient changes to comply with the established commitments in the agreement," said U.S. trade authorities in a statement issued in Washington.

The press reports also noted that the CAFTA-DR had led to numerous protests in Central American countries, and even among U.S. legislators, due to the risk of increasing the jobless rate in that region and the United States, as well as problems for Central American agricultural producers.

"Several countries are almost prepared to apply CAFTA-DR, but none has completed internal procedures," the statement said.

The U.S. government will accomplish the pending arrangements as soon as possible through continuous work with the CAFTA-DR partners, namely, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Dominican Republic, Stephen Norton, a spokesman for U.S. Trade authorities, said.

He added that the countries could continue to enjoy the current commercial preferences granted by Washington.

Source: Xinhua