WASHINGTON: The Bush administration plans to remove visa requirements for the citizens of seven allied countries, congressional aides said Thursday.
President Bush will announce Friday that Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and South Korea will be added to the U.S. visa waiver program as early as next month, the aides told newsmen.
The White House would not confirm the list but said Bush is to speak Friday on the visa waiver program. The congressional aides spoke on condition of anonymity because the president will announce the decision.
The administration has sought to reward close allies with visa-free travel but has met resistance from some lawmakers who say the visa waiver program could make it easier for terrorists to slip into the United States.
The program currently includes 27 countries, including most of Western Europe. Exclusion has been a sore point among some new NATO allies that have supported U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some of those countries, including Poland, did not make Friday's list because they could not meet admission requirements.
Negotiations with Greece, which has long sought to join other Western European countries in the program, have faltered, prompting complaints from the Athens government and Greek-American groups that it is being punished because of unrelated political disagreements with Washington over the entry of neighboring Macedonia into NATO.
Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., said he was concerned the administration waived some criteria for admission so the seven countries could be approved before Bush leaves office.
"I am dismayed the administration has decided to expand the Visa Waiver Program before implementing security measures required by law, a move that could very well jeopardize the security of the United States," Lieberman, a supporter of the program, said Thursday in an e-mail.
Congress last year enacted a law to expand the program while requiring that the government implement a system under which visitors from non-visa countries would have to register online with U.S. authorities before their departures and provide some personal information. Lieberman contends that program will not be in place when the new countries join.
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