One month before the White House finished negotiations with the Colombian government on a free trade deal, a Republican-leaning organization began working with black members of Congress on a project in the South American country.

The International Republican Institute’s (IRI) goal was to establish a counterpart in Colombia to Congress’s own Congressional Black Caucus (CBC). But it was also talking with a group that could potentially swing the controversial trade deal in Washington.

Officials with the group said the effort was intended to help a historically disenfranchised group, and not to build support in the U.S. for the trade deal, a top priority for President Bush that has been blocked by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

“The work we do is very consistent with work we do in other countries,” said Alex Sutton, IRI’s director of Latin American programs, who recently returned to Washington after working on the IRI project in Colombia for several years. He said the IRI typically works with disenfranchised blocs of people in foreign countries to help build democratic efforts.

Afro-Colombians, the descendants of slaves who for centuries lived in relative isolation in Colombia, in recent years have increasingly found themselves caught in the middle of Colombia’s civil wars. Their schools are underserved, their communities are disproportionately poor and their local leaders have been targets for assassination by various factions in Colombia.

But the timing of the effort, and the fact that the IRI has close ties to the Bush White House, raised concerns among human-rights groups and some Colombian dissidents that the IRI’s main goal was to build support in the U.S. for the Colombia free trade agreement (FTA). They said the caucus of black Colombian lawmakers, which is split on the FTA, does not reflect the views of local Afro-Colombian government bodies, who appear almost universally opposed to the deal.

Some members of the Congressional Black Caucus who worked on the IRI effort do not dismiss a link between the IRI’s work in Colombia and the trade deal.

“It would be naïve of me not to think there was [a] connection,” said Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.). “They didn’t have to take up the cause of the Afro-Colombians.”

The IRI is one of four democracy-building organizations set up by former President Reagan in the mid-1980s as the Cold War dragged to a close, and it remains the group closest to the White House. Its board of directors is chaired by Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the GOP’s presidential candidate, and its president is Lorne Craner, who worked on democracy-building as an assistant secretary of State for Bush.

The group helps develop political parties and democratic institutions in more than 100 countries and is not affiliated with the Republican Party. The IRI’s funding comes from tax dollars, as well as private grants, and it does not take positions on domestic policy in the U.S.

Its work with the CBC took place as the Colombian government undertook a concerted effort to reach out to black lawmakers in the U.S. in the hope that they would support the trade deal.

“I think the CBC is viewed as a key for passing the Colombia FTA,” said Luis Gilberto Murillo, a former governor of Choco, a Colombian state near the Pacific coast populated by Afro-Colombians.

Sutton said the Colombia trade deal wasn’t even mentioned when the group decided to work with the CBC to create an Afro-Colombian caucus, and Democratic aides described the work as separate from the free-trade deal.