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Politics : Support the French! Viva Democracy! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (622)	4/4/2003 6:35:24 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7834

Neighboring war foes get short shrift from U.S. By Andres Oppenheimer There is a fierce fight within the Bush administration over how the United States should deal with neighboring countries that opposed the U.S. war on Iraq. And the hard-liners are winning. Judging from interviews with senior U.S. officials in recent days, the Bush administration's level of annoyance is escalating with such countries as Mexico and Chile, which refused to support U.S.-backed resolutions at the U.N. Security Council. Or Canada, Argentina and Brazil, which have opposed the war with various degrees of intensity. At first, the official U.S. line - both publicly and privately - was that there would be no retaliation against countries that did not support the war. Washington would not give leaders of these countries the cold shoulder nor suddenly find previously undetected bugs in their countries' fruit exports, officials said. But now that the war is in full swing - and Mexico is scheduled to take over the chairmanship of the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday - the hard-liners within the Bush administration are taking their gloves off. Countries that support George W. Bush will be rewarded, and those that don't will get the cold treatment, the hawks say. The hard-liners, most of whom dwell in the White House, are pressing for clear signals of U.S. displeasure with Mexico and Chile. The doves, mostly located in the State Department, argue that any real or perceived U.S. retaliation would do nothing but add fuel to worldwide assertions of U.S. arrogance and imperial attitudes. The first signs that White House hawks were beginning to prevail came on March 17 after the United States failed to win a nine-vote Security Council majority for an ultimatum on Iraq to meet U.N. disarmament resolutions. U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said hours later that the United States was "disappointed" by Mexico's and Chile's positions, although officials insisted that there would be no U.S. government reprisals. After the war began March 19, the Bush administration's signs of displeasure became more overt. It was no coincidence that U.S. officials leaked to The Miami Herald last week the news that Bush had waited four days before returning a call from Mexican President Vicente Fox. Or that, in case Fox had missed the message, a U.S. official said the four-day delay should have made Fox realize that "the relationship has been affected." And it's no coincidence that Bush may consider canceling a planned state visit to Canada on May 5, according to Canada's National Post. Or that U.S. Ambassador to Canada Paul Cellucci, raising the previous level of U.S. rhetoric by a notch, said the United States is "disappointed and upset" by Canada's position on the war. Asked about the escalating U.S. rhetoric, a State Department spokesman told me last week that Bush continues to be committed to creating a 34-country Free Trade Area of the Americas by 2005. And he reiterated that Mexico's and Chile's stands in the Security Council "will not affect the crucial political and economic relations that we maintain with these two countries." A senior U.S. official who moves in hawkish circles cautioned me not to read too much into that statement. There will be consequences for nonsupportive countries, he said. "We are not going to take punitive actions, such as slapping tariffs on Mexican or Chilean imports or anything like that," the official said. "But when they have a problem, who are they going to turn to?" Chile may be the first to feel the new chill in bilateral relations, because the recently concluded U.S.-Chilean free trade agreement may be sent to the U.S. Congress as early as May. Noting that recent free-trade votes in the U.S. Congress have passed only because Bush picked up the phone and lobbied undecided lawmakers, one U.S. official wondered aloud whether Bush will be doing that for Chile now. Will the administration's harder line leave permanent scars in U.S. relations with Canada and Latin America? Is the plan to create a hemisphere-wide free-trade area in peril? My bet: If the United States finds weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, you will see France, Canada and Latin America making a political U-turn and rushing to Bush's side. If it doesn't, and if the Iraq conflict drags on, the planned hemispheric free-trade agenda will be drowned in a worldwide wave of anti- Americanism. * Andres Oppenheimer is a columnist for the Miami Herald, One Herald Plaza, Miami FL 33132; e-mail: aoppenheimer@herald.com.