Bush, Mexico President to Meet at Summit

MONTERREY, Mexico, January 12, 2004 (NYTimes) — President Bush and 33 elected leaders of the Americas will meet here on Monday without a common vision for the future of the Western Hemisphere.

Expectations for great progress are low and friction on important proposals is high. The leaders of Brazil and Argentina do not see eye to eye with Mr. Bush on his free-trade agenda. President Vicente Fox of Mexico will press him to do more for migrants than his proposition of temporary work permits.

The national security needs of the United States are being viewed by some leaders as imperious demands on their sovereignty. American agricultural subsidies are seen by some as crushing small peasant farmers and stifling competition.

Government ministers from the 34 nations at this Summit of the Americas, who have met here since Thursday, had not even agreed on a common declaration to be issued by their leaders. An American official here said there were only "possibilities at the margins" for the United States' agenda of advancing trade, security and migration control.

"There's a tremendous amount of discontent in Latin America with the United States," said Arturo Valenzuela, a former senior National Security Council staff member.

At the top of the political agenda for Mr. Bush in Mexico is his proposal to control illegal immigration by offering temporary work permits. Since more than half of the illegal workers in the United States are Mexicans, he is seeking strong support from President Fox, who says he likes the idea but wants more from Congress.

"I'm convinced it will pass," Mr. Fox said in an interview with The New York Times on Friday, "because it's very convenient for the United States" to know both the legal identities and the labor value of illegal workers.

Mr. Fox also said Friday that he would "travel to the United States as often as possible" promoting the best possible deal for Mexican migrants.

"They are working in restaurants, they are picking mushrooms, they are harvesting broccoli, working in McDonald's, working at Wal-Mart," he said of millions of illegal Mexican migrants. They should have the right, he said, to be "documented and legal," and to "go and work, return home and see their family, return and work. That's the idea, the idea that we want to endorse."

The proposal's political chances for passage depend in part on the perception of Mexico in the United States. Mr. Fox needs to discourage illegal immigration and, in particular, to continue cooperating with American officials in keeping a vigilant counterterrorism watch at Mexico's airports and borders, a United States official here said.

The United States "is very happy with the level of cooperation" on counterterrorism from Mexico, the American ambassador, Tony Garza, said in an interview. "The level of cooperation is light-years ahead of where it was even a year or two ago."

Not so with other nations. Some of the discontent at the meeting seems to rise from the "either you're with us, or you're with the terrorists" pronouncements made by the United States after the September 2001 attacks. An example is Brazil's decision to fingerprint and photograph Americans arriving at airports, mirroring what the United States is now doing to many foreigners.

Some unhappiness comes from a sense that everything south from the Texas border to Tierra del Fuego fell off the United States' radar after the attacks. "I think that there's a perception or a line of argument out there that somehow after 9/11 the United States lost interest in anything that didn't relate to terrorism and 9/11," said Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, in a briefing to reporters in Washington on Friday. "It's just not true."

More friction comes from a splintering of the so-called Washington consensus of the 1990's, which held in part that free trade could drive democracy forward and promote good government. "President Bush will have an opportunity to remind his fellow leaders of the benefit of free and open markets and open societies, and the importance of transparent elections," Ms. Rice said.

This will be the fourth Summit of the Americas since 1994. Every nation in the hemisphere except Cuba takes part. Many "are grappling with persistent political, economic, social and, in some cases, ethnic problems," said Roger Noriega, the assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs.

Economic growth in many nations from Mexico southward is too slow to generate enough jobs or ease poverty, he said in a speech on Jan. 7 about the summit meeting. In many countries, corrupt or incompetent governments have "stunted economic development and spawned disenchantment with the label `free market reforms,' " he said.

"Many of their people are weary of waiting for their lives to get better and for their futures to be brighter," Mr. Noriega said. "Soaring rhetoric is not going to meet their down-to-earth demands for concrete action and tangible results."

Mr. Bush is to arrive at midday on Monday for a meeting with Mr. Fox; they are expected to discuss immigration, border security and trade. He is then to hold a news conference with Mr. Fox, speak at the meeting's inauguration ceremony and meet with Presidents Ricardo Lagos of Chile and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil. On Tuesday Mr. Bush is to meet with the new prime minister of Canada, Paul Martin, and with Presidents Nestor Kirchner of Argentina and Carlos Mesa of Bolivia.

Mr. Bush and Mr. Martin are certain to discuss why Canada, because of its opposition to the Iraq war, is ineligible to compete for billions of dollars in American-financed Iraq reconstruction projects, officials said. Mr. Kirchner may respond to criticism from the Bush administration over Argentina's less than chilly relations with Cuba.

Mr. Bush will not see President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. The United States believes that Mr. Chávez may be working in concert with Fidel Castro of Cuba to undermine governments friendly to the United States, including those in Uruguay, Ecuador and possibly Bolivia.

In all, Mr. Bush is to spend a little more than 24 hours in Monterrey. In that time, American officials said, there are possibilities of agreements, marginal or not, on some of the United States' agenda, including stimulating economic growth, promoting businesses and attacking official corruption and organized crime.