White House Urges End to Ban on Mexican Tuna : Trade: Administration suggests that embargo be lifted in return for reductions in dolphin kills by the fishing fleet. Environmentalists say the plan is unenforceable and full of loopholes.

In a move to reconcile competing environmental, economic and foreign policy concerns, the Bush Administration on Wednesday proposed to lift a ban on imported Mexican tuna in exchange for ongoing reductions in dolphin kills by Mexico’s tuna fleet.

Officials said the proposal, if enacted by Congress, would reduce dolphin kills by 500,000 between now and the year 2000 while removing an irritant in U.S.-Mexico trade relations.

But environmentalists charged the plan is unenforceable and riddled with loopholes. They also said it would intensify the debate in Congress over whether U.S. environmental laws should be modified to meet trade concerns.

The proposal is the culmination of high-level talks between officials of the State Department, the Commerce Department and the office of the U.S. trade representative, all of whom have been eager to lift the tuna embargo. The embargo has complicated negotiations with Mexico for a new North American Free Trade Agreement.

Under the new proposal, the United States would end its tuna embargo if Mexico or Venezuela, the other country faced with an embargo, agreed to a five-year moratorium on the use of dolphin-killing purse seine nets beginning March 1, 1994. In the interim period, the embargoed countries would also be required to steadily reduce dolphin kills each year to the kill rate that existed before 1991. They would agree to allow international observers on their boats.

Dolphins swim above schools of tuna in the eastern tropical Pacific. Using the dolphins as a guide, fishermen often encircle the dolphins with purse seine nets to catch the tuna below. In the process, about 50,000 dolphins, which are air-breathing mammals, drown each year in the nets, environmentalists estimate.

The tuna embargo was reluctantly imposed in October, 1990, by the United States after environmentalists filed suit to force the Bush Administration to act. The environmentalists said Mexican tuna fleets were killing too many dolphins, violating the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act. Venezuelan tuna is also banned.

Mexico subsequently filed a complaint against the United States with the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in Geneva, declaring that the ban amounted to an illegal trade barrier.

A GATT panel ruled last August in Mexico’s favor, but Mexico tabled the issue, fearing that to press for ratification of the panel’s decision by the full GATT would jeopardize chances of U.S. congressional approval of the proposed free trade pact.

Administration officials said Wednesday they hoped the new proposal would meet with approval from both environmentalists and those concerned about trade issues.

Indeed, the proposal appeared to complement a series of steps announced last September by Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari. He said international observers would be allowed on all 46 Mexican tuna boats. He also outlined a 10-point program to protect dolphins and other marine mammals, including a $1-million effort to develop tuna-fishing methods that would result in fewer dolphin deaths.

“We think it’s . . . a good proposal,” spokeswoman Cheryl Crispen of the U.S. International Trade Administration said Wednesday of the Bush plan. “It really offers a chance to reduce the dolphin mortality rate to a much lower rate than any other viable approach, including the current embargo.”

Roddy Moscoso of the U.S. Marine Fisheries Service added that as a practical matter, tuna fishing has changed dramatically since the embargo was imposed. In 1990, he noted, major tuna canners refused to buy any tuna unless it was “dolphin safe.”

Nonetheless, the Administration plan was assailed Wednesday by an environmental group that forced the U.S. government to impose the ban last year.

“This is double talk from an Administration that is quite willing to sell out the dolphins for other foreign policy concerns,” said David Philips, executive director of the Earth Island Institute, which successfully fought for the import ban. Philips said the proposal was unenforceable and full of loopholes.

Philips said he believed that not all tuna boats would be required to carry international observers. He also said another provision allowed the continued use of the offending purse seine nets if it was for “scientific research.”

“It masquerades as a dolphin protection bill, but it’s really a free trade (measure),” Philips said in a telephone interview from San Francisco.