TLC? Yes and No.
That seems to be the recommendation by the Comisíon de Notables to president Abel Pacheco yesterday, whose report on the Tratado de Libre Comercio (TLC) - free trade agreement with the United States - which was due yesterday and expected to give some concrete advise to the government.

"We did not have the task of defining the future of the TLC, we pointed out the elements to be considered. What we did is take the document, study it and try to remove the misconceptions and distortions", said Gabriel Macaya, former dean of the Universidad de Costa Rica (UCR).

Macaya, along with fellow commission members Rodrígo Gámez, Guido Villalta, Alvar Antillón and astronaut Franklin Chang, have worked on the TLC for months and have come up with a 66 page report that considers 15 important points of the trade pact, but did not offer a conclusive consensus.

Sources close to the commission say that the Notables unofficially and not directly, recommended to the president that the TLC should be approved.

The study of the TLC agreement by the Notables considered the effect of the trade agreement on Costa Rica as well as the relationship with the other Central American countries. The Notables also studied the possibility of renegotiating the agreement or rescinding it.

President Pacheco told reporters yesterday that he will take the weekend to study the report and will give his comments early next week, probably on Tuesday, before discussing it with his cabinet for a conclusion on the matter.