U.S.-Mexico Meeting Focuses on Economics

President Clinton and Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, facing the rapidly approaching ends of their tenures, on Friday glossed over unresolved disputes between their governments and congratulated each other on the generally good relations between the sometimes contentious neighbors.

“They are satisfied with what their administrations have done to strengthen the bilateral relationships between the two countries,” Arturo Valenzuela, the National Security Council’s senior official dealing with Mexico, told reporters after the White House talks had concluded.

It was the 11th meeting between Clinton, who leaves office in January, and Zedillo, whose term ends a month earlier. With so little time remaining, the presidents clearly decided to leave points of friction to their successors to resolve.

Valenzuela said the conversation, over a long lunch in the White House family dining room, touched on Mexico’s effort to raise the U.S. quota restricting its sugar sales in this country; Washington’s desire to open Mexico’s telecommunications market to U.S. companies; and annoyance at American efforts to keep Mexican commercial trucks off U.S. highways. But he said the leaders did not discuss any of these matters in detail.

Instead, he said, they focused on economic questions and regional issues such as violence in Colombia and a disputed election in Peru.

“Both presidents reasserted their own commitment” to free trade, Valenzuela said.

The leaders looked on as, in the only formal action of the brief summit, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Mexican Foreign Minister Rosario Green signed a treaty assigning rights to oil deposits deep in the western Gulf of Mexico.

The area, known as the “doughnut hole,” was once thought to be too deep for oil exploration. Several years ago, however, Mexico complained that U.S. drilling could siphon oil from Mexico’s side of the underwater border. The new treaty, the result of two years of negotiations that produced agreement last week, awards Mexico about 62% of the area and the United States the rest.

Zedillo hailed the treaty, which he said settles the last border dispute between two countries that once fought bitterly over boundaries.

Before his session with Clinton, Zedillo met at the Inter-American Development Bank with the leaders of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, or IMF, and other international financial institutions. Like Clinton, the bankers had mostly good things to say about Zedillo.

With Zedillo sitting nearby, IMF Managing Director Horst Koehler said Mexico’s recovery from recession was “almost unprecedented.” World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn agreed that Zedillo’s economic policy “set a standard” for all of Latin America. Inter-American Development Bank President Enrique V. Iglesias said Zedillo is leaving to his successor “one of the soundest economies in the region.”

However, Zedillo did not escape criticism completely. Protesters, summoned by the Sierra Club and Amnesty International, held a vigil Thursday night outside the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where the Mexican leader was having dinner.

Alejandro Queral, Washington director of the Sierra Club’s human rights campaign, demanded the release of Mexican environmentalists Rodolfo Montiel and Teodoro Cabrera. The two men have been in prison in Mexico since May 1999.

Zedillo, who has not spoken publicly about the imprisoned men, walked by the protesters with his head turned away from them before entering the Chamber of Commerce through a side door.

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Times staff writer Jacqueline Newmyer contributed to this report.