Articles written outside the U.S. are sometimes the most interesting.
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Saturday, August 18, 2007 at 05:46
PREVIEW: Three amigos summit - NAFTA on steroids?
By Pat Reber and James Stairs, dpa

Washington (dpa) - North America's three conservative leaders head next week to a resort in Canada for their annual gathering that pundits have taken to calling the three amigos summit.

This year, critics have added another title, "NAFTA on steroids," to describe the remaining 30 guests who are captains of industry in Mexico, the United States and Canada and who serve as permanent advisors to the three amigos.

The three leaders - Mexico's President Felipe Calderon, US President George W Bush and Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper - are expected to tackle simmering cross-border security and immigration issues, as well as global issues of Afghanistan, the Middle East and Iran, according to Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for Bush's National Security Council.

Immigration is at the top of Calderon's agenda, with some 50,000 Mexicans currently living in Canada and another 11 million in the US. In addition, the Mexican opposition wants Calderon to discuss with Harper the work and living conditions for thousands of Mexican agricultural labourers who travel to Canada to work each year.

Calderon is also looking for Washington's support for his new, strident initiative against illegal drug trade that claimed 1,500 lives in Mexico this year so far. Intense talks are underway over US provision of training and equipment similar to that provided Colombia, but the issue is not formally on the board at the summit.

For Bush, the meeting comes as an unwelcome interruption to his month-long vacation on his beloved Texas ranch, and carries the added reminder that his two neighbours failed to support him in Iraq. In addition, Canada's military mission to Afghanistan is coming under increasing fire at home.

Harper however made clear that the main focus on Monday and Tuesday will be on shoring up the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA.)

"We share a continent with the United States and Mexico, and our people, our economies and our security are closely interconnected," Harper said.

At the top of the agenda is enhancing global competitiveness through the facilitation of border crossings for trade, travel and expanding commerce, Johndroe confirmed Thursday in Texas - the very same items expected to draw thousands of protestors to the summit venue at the bucolic Fairmont Le Château Montebello resort 80 kilometres outside Ottawa.

The protestors charge that the three amigos' initiative represents a threat to Canada's sovereignty over its natural resources and environmental values which, they argue, are being bargained away under the guise of public safety and eliminating red tape.

At the behest of the US White House two years ago, the leaders of Mexico, the United States and Canada agreed to give their annual summit a name - the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) - and to set up the panel of 30 business advisors as the North American Competitiveness Council.

The initiative called for agencies in the three governments to work more closely together and streamline traffic across lengthy borders in the wake of tougher security following the September 2001 terrorist attacks. It also aimed to meet the rising challenge from "new economic powerhouses such as China and India," then-Canadian prime minister Paul Martin said.

The apparatus, critics say, is nothing more than a disguise for Washington's ambitions to set the social and trade tone for a common- market type arrangement with Canada and Mexico.

"The SPP is not, as its proponents claim, about eliminating the 'tyranny of small differences' among the three NAFTA countries," prominent Canadian activist Maude Barlow told a Canadian parliamentary committee in May. "It is quite literally about eliminating Canada's ability to determine independent regulatory standards, environmental protections, energy security, foreign, military, immigration and other policiese."

Barlow, who heads the high profile Council of Canadians, charges that the only stakeholders who have been consulted in the new apparatus are big business, and that legislatures are only informed after the fact.

To rebut such suspicions, the SPP, has posted a "myths versus facts" file on its official US website, naming, then dismissing as untrue, such claims that the SPP is a movement to "merge" the three countries, form a "common currency" and "build a NAFTA super highway" without the "knowledge of the US Congress."

"The SPP does not attempt to modify our sovereignty or currency or change the American system of government designed by our founding fathers," the text says.

Also on the agenda in Canada are sustainable energy and the environment, and energy management, Johndroe said. Nearly one-third of US oil imports come from its two North American neighbours.

Other items could include the issue of Arctic sovereignty, unsafe Chinese toys and recent US market disruptions.

http://www.eux.tv/article.aspx?articleId=12920