Bush to Make Border Pact With Mexico, 'Free Trade a Success'
Mexican President Vicente Fox Flanked by President Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien
Friday, March 22, 2002
MONTERREY, Mexico — Balancing free trade with homeland security, President Bush and Mexican President Vicente Fox plan to announce Friday a 22-point "smart border" accord that would bar entry by criminals and would-be terrorists while easing cross-border access for legitimate business.
The deal aims to speed border crossings for truckers and regular visitors by administering electronic toll tags. It will also use high-tech equipment for inspection systems, easing intelligence-sharing by both sides in order to keep out criminals.
"We're sharing information the likes of which we've never shared before," Bush told Texans at an El Paso rally before crossing the border to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
In El Paso, Bush inspected cargo trucks and a motorcoach recently seized by agents after high-tech density meters and X-rays detected secret compartments containing drugs.
Secretary of State Colin Powell and Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castañeda are expected to sign the deal on Friday. The United States and Canada signed a similar pact last December.
On Thursday, Bush asked Congress for $27 billion in emergency funds for various needs in the war on terror, including an extra $50 million for border security.
"We must work to make sure our border is modernized so that the commerce that takes place can move more freely, can be expedited so as it makes it easier for people to have jobs and find work," Bush said.
"On the other hand," he added, "we want to use our technology to make sure that we weed out those who we don't want in our country, the terrorists, the coyotes, the smugglers, those who prey on innocent life."
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"Coyotes" is a term used along the southern border to describe smugglers of illegal immigrants.
Congress has also been trying to tackle border-security problems. On Thursday, the House Judiciary Committee approved a plan that would split the Immigration and Naturalization Service into two distinct units, one for enforcement, the other for administration. It would also create an office to deal with underage immigrants.
The bill is expected to pass the House, but is competing with a Senate measure proposed by Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., that would give more oversight authority to the Justice Department, where the INS is housed.
Bush is considering a third proposal that would combine border security efforts, currently divided between the INS and the Customs Service.
On Friday, Bush introduced a U.S. government program encouraging private business investment in Mexico's poorest areas — from which most of the illegal immigrants in the United States come.
Aides said new funding will not be part of the Mexican development initiatives.
Bush is in Monterrey to present a three-year, $10 billion foreign aid package to a U.N. conference discussing methods of tackling corruption, dismantling trade barriers and promoting democratic reforms.
Bush directed his secretaries of State and Treasury to develop eligibility criteria, and promised those criteria would be applied "fairly and rigorously." He called for dispensing more aid in the form of grants rather than loans, arguing that a colossal debt burden keeps poor countries from healing their sick and educating their children.
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White House press secretary Ari Fleischer
Bush also advocated opening markets and lowering trade barriers, and expressed hope that a new global free-trade agreement would be reached as a means of alleviating poverty.
He also emphasized that helping poor nations succeed will prevent terrorism.
"History has called us to a titanic struggle whose stakes could not be higher because we're fighting for freedom itself. We're pursuing great and worthy goals – to make the world safer and, as we do, to make it better," Bush told some four dozen heads of state meeting at the U.N. International Conference on Financing for Development, in which 171 countries participated.
"We fight against poverty because hope is an answer to terrorism. We fight against poverty because opportunity is a fundamental right and human dignity. We fight against poverty because faith requires it and conscience demands it. And we fight against poverty with the growing conviction that major progress is within our reach," he said.
Before the meeting, Bush, Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien met privately Thursday evening to discuss "neighborhood" concerns, including a renewed commitment for free trade throughout the Western Hemisphere.
White House press secretary Ari Fleischer described Bush's meeting with Chrétien and Fox as a "general discussion" of trade, energy policy and border security – not a forum for making decisions or sealing agreements.
The three leaders did agree that the North American Free Trade Agreement has been a success and that a new free-trade pact should be negotiated for the entire hemisphere, Fleischer said.
Fox's press office issued its own statement, saying the leaders shared their vision of a "gradual convergence of these countries toward values and interests which will give a new sense of community in North America."
Despite the successes, there are some disputes among the trading partners. The United States continues to accuse Canada of exporting softwood lumber to U.S. markets, using government subsidies.
Bush, Chrétien and Fox – who have jokingly called themselves the "Three Amigos" – next meet again in October, also in Mexico, at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Baja California.
After Thursday night's talks, Bush attended dinner for 600 people – an outdoor banquet thrown by Fox and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan amid a hulking complex of retired steel mills, now a museum to Monterrey's early 20th-century industrial beginnings.
Fox News' James Rosen and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
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