Update to NAFTA Treaty Is Planned at Texas Summit

President Bush and his counterparts from Mexico and Canada will unveil an agreement called the North American Initiative next week at their summit in Texas in a bid to address perceived shortcomings and inequities in the 11-year-old continental free trade agreement, Mexican President Vicente Fox said Wednesday.

Speaking with foreign reporters, Fox also criticized U.S. vigilante groups who have tracked and detained undocumented border crossers. His government has protested such operations through diplomatic channels, and Fox said he had complained to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about vigilantes during her visit here last week.

Fox lauded the North American Free Trade Agreement as having fostered economic growth in Mexico since it went into effect in January 1994. But he and others in his administration have frequently complained that some provisions, including those covering agriculture, are disadvantageous to Mexico.

Fox said he hoped the North American Initiative, now in draft form, would be agreed upon at the summit Wednesday in Texas with Bush and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin.

A senior official at the White House confirmed the outline of the proposal but declined to detail its provisions.

The new agreement will include provisions concerning cross-border energy, finance and security issues, as well as tariff measures to increase competitiveness. Education and technology will also be addressed, Fox said.

Fox said that the initiative would not require a renegotiation of NAFTA. Rather, he said, it would represent an addendum or “new chapter” to the continental trade agreement, the framework for $800 billion in annual trade among the three member countries. It was unclear Wednesday whether the initiative would need approval by the nations’ legislatures, as did NAFTA.

Fox said Mexico’s participation in NAFTA had brought it a doubling of per capita income over 11 years, as well as a doubling in gross domestic product. The United States and Mexico also have begun the so-called Partnership for Prosperity, a program meant to promote infrastructure and business initiatives on the Mexican side of the border.

Fox criticized the walls that have been built by the U.S. along various sections of the 2,200-mile border with Mexico, especially in California.

“They don’t work. They should be knocked down.... They are discriminatory, are an affront to liberty and no country should be proud of itself having to build walls,” Fox said.

President Bush is expected to request tighter security measures to guard against possible border crossings by militants. Administration officials have said publicly that they are concerned that Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups could infiltrate the U.S. border with Mexico. Fox said Mexico was eager to cooperate but no such threat had made itself apparent.

“I must underline that we know of no evidence and no indication that terrorists of Al Qaeda or from any other part of the world have entered Mexican territory on the way to the United States,” Fox said.

Fox said he planned to lay out his case to Bush for an immigration reform bill to legalize the status of hundreds of thousands of undocumented Mexicans in the United States. The fate of such a bill is uncertain. Prospects appear poor for any bill that would give amnesty to illegal immigrants already in the United States; a proposal that would establish a system of temporary work permits for those who can prove they have solid job prospects is thought to have a better chance.