21.   Other problems facing the region include drug trafficking and the disappearance of preferential trade deals with Europe.

22.   A Canadian parliamentary committee has already recommended the approval of the preferential trade agreement, but details need to be ironed out.

23.   A special pre-summit meeting Wednesday focused on the soaring cost of imported food, the destructive Pink Mealybug, and threats to preferential trade access.

24.   An astronomical food import bill, threats to preferential trade access, and the destructive Pink Mealybug have created a crisis in Caribbean agriculture, regional leaders say.

25.   But Cuba has diversified its economy somewhat since losing its former communist financial partners and preferential trade with the collapse of the former Soviet Union a decade ago.

26.   Cuba is still struggling to recover from the economic crisis that began when it lost its primary sources of preferential trade with the collapse of the Soviet bloc.

27.   Developing countries themselves, having benefited over the past two decades from billions of dollars in EU grants and preferential trade arrangements, are reluctant to loosen the ties.

28.   --Expressed hope that Congress would act to grant China permanent preferential trade status as well as enacting legislation to ease trade barriers with sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean.

29.   Europe gives preferential trade quotas and tariffs to its former colonies in the Caribbean and elsewhere.

30.   He called on Congress to grant preferential trade terms to Beijing.