Bush’s Mexico Trip Will Aim to Launch New Era in Relations

In his first venture abroad, President Bush travels to Mexico this week to launch a new era in relations between the United States and its increasingly important neighbor to the south.

Friday’s trip to Mexican President Vicente Fox’s ranch in Guanajuato state has been deliberately designed to ease Bush into foreign policy, widely characterized as his weak suit. The former Texas governor feels most comfortable with Mexico, which he has visited more than any other country during his limited foreign travels.

Yet Bush is expected to address a range of sensitive issues, such as immigration, narcotics trafficking and Cuba, in an effort to deepen a relationship that has already been transformed in the eight years since Bush’s father was president.

The enactment of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994 has so rapidly increased commerce that Mexico recently replaced Japan as the second-largest U.S. trading partner, behind Canada. Fox’s inauguration Dec. 1, ending 71 years of unbroken rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, marked what many Mexicans regard as the onset of truer democracy.

These developments have opened the way for new thinking on both sides of the border about changing the rules that have defined U.S.-Mexican relations for decades.

Bush and Fox can now “take the opportunity of the upcoming meeting to chart a course for mutual cooperation over the next several years,” said Secretary of State Colin L. Powell after talks in Washington last month with Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda.

Indeed, the underlying issue at the Guanajuato meeting--and probably for the rest of the Bush and Fox presidencies--will be the changing balance of power between Mexico and the U.S. The only question is how much it will change.

Mexico’s new government has already made clear that it seeks a relationship of peers, ending the paternalistic U.S. role of years past. It wants an arrangement that more closely reflects the new flow of trade--nearly $700 million a day--that moves both ways in roughly equal amounts.

“The message from Mexico is that the United States should expect a more activist Mexico less willing to take it on the chin,” said Jonathan Doh, former head of NAFTA affairs at the Commerce Department and now on the faculty of American University in Washington.

“Ultimately, Fox wants NAFTA to be like the European Union, a far closer political, economic, social and cultural union,” Doh said. “He talks about achieving it in 25 to 30 years but starting the process now.”

The Bush administration, which is still in the throes of a comprehensive foreign policy review, is not ready to look even four years down the road. Washington is prepared, however, to move on some issues of common concern.

U.S. and Mexican officials say several key subjects are likely to dominate the Bush-Fox talks:

* Trade. NAFTA has tripled the flow of goods and services between the two countries to more than $250 billion last year. The export boom has created more than 1 million jobs in factories throughout Mexico, U.S. officials say.

But several trade disputes fester. The United States complains that Mexico has failed to fully open its telecommunications market to competition, whereas Mexico complains that the U.S. has not opened its market to Mexican sugar.

One of the most bitter disputes might have been resolved last week when a NAFTA arbitration panel ruled that the U.S. must open its roads to Mexican trucks. The Bush administration said it would accept the ruling, reversing former President Clinton’s union-backed policy of refusing entry to Mexican freight haulers.

Fox, however, would like to move beyond narrow issues. He wants to focus on expanding the scope of NAFTA and ensuring that Mexico’s network of free-trade agreements with the European Union and much of Latin America protects the country from a downturn in the U.S. economy.

Bush and Fox are expected to call for new efforts to make the existing trade alliance work better. “We have high expectations in both atmospherics and substance,” Castaneda said in an interview. “The momentum is the message.”

* Immigration. The most pressing issue for Mexico is the continuing flood of its citizens into the U.S. in search of jobs. A 1999 migration project estimated that 7 million Mexican-born people were living in the U.S., including as many as 2.4 million illegal immigrants.

The two countries have traditionally viewed the issue through different prisms. For the United States, immigration has been predominantly an enforcement and economic issue; for Mexico, it has been a human rights matter.

Castaneda expressed concern that more than 300 Mexicans die each year from exposure, dehydration, starvation or abusive treatment as they cross the border.

Fox has floated the idea of establishing an “open border” within the next decade to allow free travel between the two nations, calling it a logical extension of NAFTA. The proposal has triggered debate on a topic previously seen as taboo.

Bush and Fox are expected to discuss the possibility of increasing the number of Mexicans allowed to enter the U.S. for short terms. Based on the special NAFTA relationship, Fox will push to have Mexico’s people exempted from the usual standards applied to immigrants, Mexican officials said. Four working groups are expected to be set up to deal with various aspects of immigration policy.

* Border. The 2,100-mile border itself is an issue. Explosive economic growth in the region, now home to more than 12 million people, has worsened environmental problems affecting communities on both sides.

Disputes over water rights have flared. Mexico’s Foreign Ministry protested last week to the State Department about a U.S. plan to manage the Colorado River Basin, which serves Mexican communities in Baja California.

Other problems include sewage treatment and industrial waste handling in the sprawling factory towns on the Mexican side.

Mexico has named Ernesto Ruffo Appel, former governor of Baja California, as its first border czar. His challenges include border-crossing bottlenecks. The U.S. Embassy in Mexico issued 2 million visas to Mexicans last year, and there are more than 310 million crossings annually.

* Drugs. Another source of tension is the flow of cocaine, heroin, amphetamines and marijuana across the border. Washington faults Mexico for failing to stop trafficking, and Mexico cites unchecked U.S. demand for drugs.

The two governments can’t agree on tactics either. In 1998, Mexico was enraged when U.S. agents mounted Operation Casablanca to bust up drug-money laundering operations on both sides of the border without first seeking Mexican permission. U.S. agents are not allowed to carry arms in Mexico, another source of controversy.

But Mexico has authorized the extradition of more than a dozen drug lords, and the Mexican Supreme Court recently affirmed the constitutionality of those decisions, which could speed the cases. U.S. officials say actual delivery of the drug lords will be a test of Mexico’s resolve.

Bush and Fox are likely to discuss the U.S. policy of “certifying” nations that cooperate in the war on drugs. Countries not on the list face sanctions and limits on U.S. aid.

Mexico has always been certified, though often barely. Castaneda called the process “counterproductive, unilateral and an irritant” to relations. The Fox government would like to be exempted from the annual review for two or three years while it implements a new anti-narcotics plan.

Powell has already held talks on Capitol Hill to explore ways to make the process “less onerous” for Mexico. But he contends that the Bush administration has little choice for now because certification is still the law.

* Cuba. The most intractable dispute involves Cuba, and the gap is widening. While pushing for human rights and democracy in Cuba, the Fox government also intends to strengthen economic and cultural ties with the Caribbean nation. Castaneda said a policy of engagement is the best way to re-integrate Cuba into the hemisphere.

The new Bush administration couldn’t disagree more. “No matter how much you might want to do business in Cuba, you have to consider it is one of the last surviving dictatorships on the face of the Earth, run by a man who has never stood for election of any serious kind in almost 50 years,” Powell said in his Senate confirmation hearings, referring to Cuban President Fidel Castro. “His day is past. We should do nothing which encourages him or gives him the wherewithal to stay any longer.”

Officials said Cuba is the one issue on which no significant compromise is expected during the Bush-Fox talks.

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Wright reported from Washington and Smith from Mexico City.