Bush, Salinas Optimistic on U.S.-Mexico Ties

President-elect George Bush and President-elect Carlos Salinas de Gortari of Mexico met for more than two hours at the Johnson Space Center on Tuesday in a get-acquainted session intended to put the strain of the current U.S.-Mexican relationship behind them and usher in better cooperation between the neighbor nations.

When the leaders of the United States and Mexico last met, the encounter was a stormy one. In that February conference, President Miguel de la Madrid lectured President Reagan on the United States’ failure to stem the use of illegal drugs by its citizens and defended his country’s effort to fight drug smuggling.

In contrast, after Tuesday’s talk, Bush and Salinas took pains to emphasize an optimistic outlook.

“We’ve begun a dialogue that I think both of us want to have ongoing,” Bush said. “I am absolutely confident we are both committed to continuing a bilateral relationship that is, in my view, essential as far as the United States of America is concerned.”

Salinas, standing at Bush’s side, said that the talk was “a positive, a respectful and a cordial dialogue which I am certain will do a great deal to improve the relationship between Mexico and the United States.”

The leaders provided no details on their discussion during the 2 1/2-hour meeting and their elaborate six-course shrimp and chicken lunch, but Bush aides said that the two talked about drugs, bilateral trade, immigration and Mexico’s foreign debt.

The U.S.-Mexico relationship in recent years has been rocky because of discord on three central issues: Mexico’s huge debt to the U.S. government and U.S. lenders, the influx of aliens across the southern U.S. border and the drug problem. In addition, Mexico has opposed U.S. efforts to aid the Contras fighting in Nicaragua.

Pressure for progress on at least some of these points--particularly drug smuggling--is expected to intensify in the first year of Bush’s term.

Bush was accompanied to the session by James A. Baker III, the secretary of state-designate; Treasury Secretary Nicholas F. Brady; Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams, and Bush’s national security adviser, Donald Gregg.

Bush’s visit to Texas came 25 years to the day after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. The plane Bush used, a Boeing 707 in the U.S. Air Force’s presidential fleet, was the same aircraft, with tail number 26000, in which Kennedy flew to Dallas and which carried his body back to Washington on Nov. 22, 1963.

The meeting Tuesday, a traditional pre-inauguration get-together for the incoming presidents of the two countries, was part of an effort by Bush to open lines of communications with foreign leaders and to build domestic good will before he takes office Jan. 20. Before meeting Salinas, he spoke Tuesday morning at the annual conference of the Republican Governors Assn. in Point Clear, Ala., on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay. This afternoon, he will begin a Thanksgiving holiday weekend at his vacation home in Kennebunkport, Me.

The travel took Bush away from what has been a concerted effort to line up the senior members of his new Administration.

The next choices he is considered likely to announce are the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, expected to be Stanford University economist Michael J. Boskin, and the secretary of defense, who Bush aides say will almost certainly be former Sen. John Tower of Texas.

Gov. John H. Sununu of New Hampshire, who will serve as chief of Bush’s White House staff, indicated that the President-elect is looking for a two-person team to head the Pentagon. One would be “someone who can deal with Congress” and who understands the nation’s defense priorities--believed to be Tower, a former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. The other would be “someone who has management capacity,” Sununu said.

“Which way they are tandemed is sort of optional,” Sununu told reporters at the governors’ conference. However, sources have indicated that the latter role would probably be a deputy’s post and that several leading corporate executives are being considered for it.

Some sources discounted the likelihood that Paul H. O’Neill, chairman of Aluminum Corp. of America and a possible candidate for defense secretary--would accept the No. 2 post.

For his part, Bush seemed bemused by all the speculation about his pending appointments and indicated that there may be no new announcements this week.

“Someday, somebody will understand that I set how those things are going to work,” he said. “It’s going to take awhile, but they’re going to understand that.”

Meanwhile, sources in close touch with transition leaders said that several other people are emerging as strong candidates for top jobs. They include:

-- Secretary of the Army John O. Marsh Jr., who is being considered for the new drug czar’s post.

-- Former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander, now president of the University of Tennessee system, under serious consideration for secretary of interior.

-- Rep. Lynn Martin (R-Ill.), who “probably can have whatever she wishes--a White House or Cabinet post,” said the source. Martin has figured in speculation to head either Transportation or Health and Human Services.

-- Chester A. Crocker, assistant secretary of state for African affairs, a prospect for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

There remains some speculation that Craig Fuller, passed over as White House chief of staff, might agree to run the Transportation Department or the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Fuller, Bush’s vice presidential chief of staff, has said he wants to leave government in January.

In Alabama, Bush pledged that on his first day in office he would name the Administration’s negotiators to begin deficit-reduction talks with the House and Senate.

“I, too, will be ‘hands-on’ in talking with members of the Congress--both sides of the aisle,” he promised, adding, “The problem of the federal deficit is pressing, and I intend to do what I can.”

Bush, whose popular vote margin in the presidential election was 54% to 46% but whose party lost four seats in the House of Representatives and one in the Senate, told his fellow Republicans that “we are on our way to becoming the majority party in America--if we don’t lose sight of what is driving our success.”

“The American people, in voting for me, have said in clear terms that the solution to the federal budget deficit is to get better control of spending, keep the economy expanding and not raise taxes,” he said.

In other business Tuesday, Bush offered his congratulations to Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney on Mulroney’s victory Monday in Canada’s parliamentary elections.

Times staff writers Paul Houston and Don Shannon in Washington contributed to this story.