‘3 Amigos’ to talk trade and security

WACO, Texas – President Bush joins the wary leaders of Mexico and Canada today to forge a new North American effort to bolster border security and economic prosperity in a new era of terrorism and global competition.

The unusual trilateral meetings here at Baylor University and at the president’s nearby ranch are branded by some the “Three Amigos Summit.” But there are plenty of sore feelings on all sides as Mexican President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin arrive for the talks.

For one, the Bush administration is chagrined at Martin’s recent decision to shun the U.S. development of an anti-ballistic missile shield. There’s also tension between the United States and Mexico over rising crime along the Mexican side of the border. And the thorny issues of illegal immigration continue to fester.

Then, there are pressing economic and trade matters, with calls from all three countries to tinker with the decade-old North American Free Trade Agreement to better compete with the expanded European Union and the exploding economies in Asia, particularly in China and India.

“This is an opportunity to be architects of the future,” suggested former Canadian Finance Minister John Manley.

Today’s summit will be the first meeting of the three leaders. And despite Manley’s optimism, analysts expect the emerging North American initiative to be, at best, a new beginning for trilateral cooperation.

“All three leaders understand the importance of their relationships, and they know that they have deteriorated,” said Robert Pastor, vice president for international affairs at American University in Washington.

But he said he expected the summit to produce only some “lofty rhetoric, followed by incremental steps.”

In Mexico City, Fox has also made it clear there would be no breakthrough on Bush’s proposal for a new temporary guest-worker program that could legalize millions of undocumented Mexican immigrants.

Instead, the focus will be on what former Mexican Finance Minister Pedro Aspe called “a new vision for North America.”

The economic development issues are especially important in Mexico, where most of the growth has been in the northern part of the country.

Fox has been promoting development in the south and will undoubtedly seek more help from his northern neighbors.

Economic development, however, is increasingly intertwined since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks with security efforts along the U.S. borders with Canada and Mexico.

The new challenges are drawing the three countries closer together, said Thomas D’Aquino, head of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives. But, he emphasized, another terrorist attack could easily freeze the borders again.

So, he said, “There’s a huge reason for pulling all this together and selling it as a package.”

It could be a tough sell.

In Canada and Mexico, there is still widespread angst over the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and what is widely perceived as Bush’s go-it-alone diplomacy and his cowboy image.

“It’s not only the war in Iraq, it’s the way in which the United States treated its two neighbors on that,” Pastor said. “The Bush administration seemed completely unaware of what the views were in Canada and Mexico and dismissed them. And that kind of dismissal left a bad taste in all three countries.”