Promising to take advantage of fresh leadership in both countries to build “cooperation and respect,” President Bush sat down with Mexican President Vicente Fox on Friday to begin a long process of reaching new understandings of vexing issues ranging from border migration to energy shortages.
“Each nation has a new president and a new perspective. Geography has made us neighbors; cooperation and respect will make us partners,” Bush said at Fox’s ranch, where the two men–both sporting their trademark cowboy boots and belt buckles–spent the afternoon talking, scratching a horse’s head, eating barbecue and getting to know each other better.
The talks, as expected, produced no breakthroughs on difficult and sensitive issues that included how to improve cooperation on immigration, meet both countries’ growing need for new energy sources and combat illegal drug trafficking.
They also discussed ways to strengthen already robust trade ties between the two nations, and both men said they came away from the meeting with new confidence they could work together to improve lives in Mexico and in the United States.
“I am certain that we will be able to take advantage of the historic opportunity we have today to set out on the way to a century of shared prosperity,” Fox said.
Bush, making the first foreign trip of his presidency, touched down in the city of Leon at an airport ringed by fields in mountains, and warmly greeted Fox with a handshake and embrace. The two men introduced their entourages, including Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.
After a quick welcoming ceremony, the two leaders climbed into a black sport-utility vehicle for the 25-mile trip to Fox’s ranch, passing roadside banners with joined hands reading, “Partners for Prosperity.”
The first stop was Fox’s mother’s house, where Bush kissed Mercedes Quesada on the cheek, exchanged a few words in Spanish with family members and then received a plate of cookies and a whispered comment from the president’s mother.
“I thought your advice was going to be, `Always listen to your mother,'” he joked with her.
Bush also received from a San Cristobal craftsman a huge sombrero with images of the two national flags and “George W. Bush” embroidered in gold-leaf thread. He glanced at an aide nearby before deciding not to don the oversize hat.
The presidents then moved on to Fox’s small hacienda-style ranch house, surrounded by broccoli fields. Asked if he shared his father’s famous revulsion for the vegetable, Bush grimaced, extended a hand and turned his thumb down.
“Make it cauliflower,” he said.
After a few hours in private for meetings and a walk around the ranch stables, the two men emerged in shirtsleeves for a press conference in the garden.
Bush appeared relaxed, listening with pursed lips to a translation as Fox spoke and chuckling at some of the Mexican reporters’ questions.
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Both presidents spoke a few words in the other’s language. Fox interrupted his opening statement in Spanish to tell Bush, “I want you to know that we consider you a friend of Mexico, a friend of Mexican people, and a friend of mine.”
He called talks between the two “productive and cordial” and said he saw both men taking office within a few months of each other as an opportunity “to project our common objectives with a long-term vision.”
Fox took office in December after a historic landslide election victory over the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, which had ruled Mexico with an iron fist for 71 years.
Bush, in turn, praised in Spanish “the great friendship between our peoples,” said he and Fox had had “a warm and substantive and frank dialogue on the many issues that shape the relationship between America and Mexico.”
Bush said the men had talked about bolstering already strong trade ties between the two nations, which have been closely linked since the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994.
They also “exchanged ideas”–apparently without reaching much common ground–on “safe and orderly migration,” talked about how to meet “our current and future energy needs,” and discussed education and combating drug trafficking and organized crime, Bush said.
Asked about the contentious issue of the United States’ annual certification of Mexico’s anti-drug efforts, a process that Mexicans regard as an insulting violation of their sovereignty, Bush came close to endorsing a change, saying he believed that a movement to review the policy was under way in Congress.
“I’m certainly going to take the message back to the members of Congress that I firmly believe that President Fox will do everything in his power to root out the drug lords and to halt drug trafficking,” the president said.
“I trust your president,” Bush said. “He is the kind of man you can look in the eye and know he is shooting straight with you.
“I appreciate the fact that he was a one-time governor,” he added with a wry smile. “I’ve got kind of a partiality to governors.”
Bush also soothed a Mexican sore spot by admitting that high U.S. demand for drugs drives the drug trade that is afflicting Mexico and other Latin American nations.
“One of the reasons, the main reason, why drugs are shipped through Mexico to the United States is because United States citizens use drugs,” he said. “Our nation must do a better job of educating our citizenry about the dangers and evils of drug use,” he said.
The president praised Fox for “bold and courageous statements about extradition” of drug lords and said the Mexican leader had “showed some unique leadership on that issue.”
Fox, in turn, said he had spoken with Bush about the possibility of creating a common energy policy for Canada, the United States, Mexico and part of Central America.
Such a policy would be “a win-win situation for everyone,” he said, by allowing partners to use excess capacity to meet each others’ needs.
Bush, a former oilman who obviously relished a reporter’s question on energy, said he and Fox also had discussed the possibility of whether power generated in Baja California could be added to California’s energy-starved power grid. Bush warned that transfers of energy could encounter transmission bottlenecks.
Energy discussions, “rightly so, took quite a bit of time in our meetings, and it’s going to take more time down the road,” Bush said. “We have a great opportunity to come together and have a strategy that honors Mexico and honors its sovereignty and at the same time recognizes that people are what matters most.”
The two presidents also spoke briefly about the potential effects of a growing downturn in the long-booming U.S. economy. With 90 percent of Mexico’s trade now going to the United States, Fox “knows exactly what I know, that if our economy were to slow significantly, it would affect our abilities to see the benefits of free trade. It would affect the Mexican economy,” Bush said.
The president reassured Mexicans that he would put in place fiscal policies to try to keep the U.S. economy growing “because it’s beneficial not only for our people but for the Mexican people.”
Following the meetings, overshadowed in many ways by U.S. and British airstrikes against Iraqi military sites Friday, Bush flew to his ranch near Waco, Texas, where he planned to spend the weekend.