Pact

GENEVA -- More than 60 countries endorsed a landmark agreement in Geneva yesterday to open their telecommunication markets to all rivals.The pact legally commits governments to unlocking the state telephone monopolies that still control more than half of the world's communications business.The agreement came after weeks of bruising negotiations in which the United States pushed for greater liberalization and slowly coaxed concessions from countries around the world.The United States did not get everything it wanted.

REYNOSA, Mexico -- Mariana Garrocho Zuniga is 13 and the proud wearer of Delco badge No. 58491. She earns 67 cents an hour at the Delnosa plant of Delco, a General Motors Corp. subsidiary.Barely 5-feet tall and weighing about 98 pounds, Mariana does not seem strong enough to work a 48-hour week making dashboard components for Cadillacs. Under Mexican labor law she shouldn't be working at all. The legal working age is 14 .Yesterday President Bush met with President Carlos Salinas de Gortari to discuss the free trade pact being negotiated by the United States, Canada and Mexico that could have a marked effect on Mariana and millions of other children working in Mexico.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush signed the North American Free Trade Agreement yesterday, and his successor-in-waiting Bill Clinton immediately announced that he would not seek the treaty's renegotiation.Mr. Clinton, in a statement issued in Little Rock, Ark., said the signing represented "an important step" toward the economic integration of North America. He repeated his campaign assertion that there would have to be new job and environmental protections, and safeguards against sudden trade "surges," but these could be settled without renegotiating the treaty with Mexico and Canada before he submitted implementing legislation.

WASHINGTON -- As Helen Delich Bentley delivered her final burst of fury from the House floor, nobody could accuse her of abandoning her image as a dogged defender of American manufacturing and trade interests.Even as aides packed moving boxes in her Capitol Hill office, Mrs. Bentley took to a lectern on the House floor yesterday to wag an angry finger and blast the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.'Hydra-headed monster'"It is unfortunate that we will not put off this vote until we can determine what kind of a Hydra-headed monster is being foisted on the American people," Mrs. Bentley said.

REYNOSA, Mexico -- Mariana Garrocho Zuniga is 13 and the proud wearer of Delco badge No. 58491. She earns 67 cents an hour at the Delnosa plant of Delco, a General Motors Corp. subsidiary. Barely 5 feet tall and weighing about 98 pounds, Mariana does not seem strong enough to work a 48-hour week making --board components for Cadillacs. Under Mexican labor law, she shouldn't be working at all. The legal working age is 14.Yesterday, President Bush met with President Carlos Salinas de Gortari to discuss the free-trade pact being negotiated by the United States, Canada and Mexico that could have a marked effect on Mariana and 12 million other children working in Mexico.

MOSCOW - Russia took pains yesterday to back away from a top Kremlin aide's remarks that the country would not ratify a landmark accord aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, stressing that Moscow has yet to make a decision about the international pact. On Tuesday, Andrei Illarionov, Russian President Vladimir V. Putin's economic issues adviser, appeared to deal a fatal blow to the controversial 1997 Kyoto Protocol, saying Moscow could not ratify the pact in its current form. The agreement needs Russia's approval to be put into force.

Local dockworkers, as expected, voted overwhelmingly in favor of their new national contract with employers.In all-day balloting yesterday, members of the International Longshoremen's Association voted in favor of the contract by a margin of better than 95 percent, or 1,113 to 51 votes.A spokesman for the union's headquarters in New York said the early results from voting at other ports indicated a similar strong acceptance of the pact and seemed to assure its ratification.The contract, settled late last month, calls for $1 an hour raises in each of its four years, boosting wages to $22 an hour by late 1993.

PACT '95, which on Tuesday won all three of its races, swept its opponents again yesterday in the Columbus Cup team racing regatta sailed on the Severn River and in the process forced a change of format for the balance of the competition.Originally scheduled as a third round-robin series among four teams of three boats each and the finals, the racing in Baltimore tomorrow now will include a race-off between the Santa Maria Cup team and Team Nippon for third place and the start of a final series between PACT '95 and Team Chesapeake.

WASHINGTON -- When the president of Mexico visits him Saturday, President Bush is expected to hit Carlos Salinas de Gortari with this piece of bad news: The proposed free-trade agreement between the United States and Mexico is on hold, possibly until after the 1992 presidential election.A prolonged recession in the United States and Mr. Bush's suddenly uncertain re-election dooms consummation of the controversial pact until late next year at the earliest, both supporters and opponents say."

MOSCOW - The Russian Cabinet approved ratification of the Kyoto Protocol yesterday, a decisive step that effectively sets the stage for worldwide enactment of the landmark accord on global warming after years of diplomatic wrangling. The accord, reached in 1997 after two years of talks, calls for industrialized nations to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming. Proponents still need backing from Russia's parliament, both chambers of which are controlled by loyalists to President Vladimir V. Putin, who are expected to fall in line with yesterday's decision.