President Barack Obama's chief spokesman Friday said that the President won't submit to Congress a pending free trade agreement with Colombia, as Republicans and business leaders are urging, because it would be defeated.

The Colombia agreement won’t go to the House and Senate in the near future, “and that is because it doesn't have the votes," said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs.

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POLITICO 44

Gibbs said that the Obama administration is pursuing unspecified changes to the agreement to make it more acceptable in Congress, but the deal faces considerably more opposition from Democrats than another trade pact with South Korea.

But Colombian trade officials say the Obama administration hasn't said yet what it wants to change, nor indicated when those consultations will commence.

"The White House hasn't decided what to do yet," said a senior Democratic congressional aide working directly involved with trade. "Korea is moving, but [White House officials] know that Colombia is going to much worse for Democrats."

Republicans and business leaders have pressed the president to move forward on enacting the Colombia agreement, pending since 2006, at the same time as another with South Korea. While some unions and Democrats support the South Korea agreement, labor and congressional Democrats are united against the Colombia deal.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who blocked a vote on the Colombia pact in 2008, remains opposed to the agreement. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, who met with Obama Friday along with other labor leaders, feels strongly that Colombia has not protected workers from murder and other violent forms of intimidation, according to a source close to him. While he was head of the United Mine Workers Union, Trumka hosted a visit from a Colombian union organizer who was later murdered by anti-union thugs, this source said.

Gibbs conceded Friday there was considerable Democratic opposition to the Colombia deal, adding that there are doubts about whether newly-elected, tea party-affiliated Republicans would be enthusiastic about trade pacts. Gibbs called them "not your country-club Republicans."

He added that there is no firm timeline for pushing the deal, "or, for that matter, the Panama agreement."

"We have said consistently that we want to resolve outstanding issues with these agreements, and are working to do so for the express purpose of moving each of them forward at the right time for Congress’s consideration," Gibbs said. "That’s still the case.”

The AFL-CIO says that 41 trade unionists have been murdered in Colombia so far this year, continuing a long history there of labor intimidation.

A Colombian government official disputed those numbers and said that President Juan Manuel Santos Calderon, who was inaugurated in August, had taken several steps to reduce anti-union violence and reform the judiciary in Colombia, where an armed insurrection and drug cartels have caused civil strife for many years.