Mexico's FM in Washington: Wants "New Agenda" on Relations, Cuba, Colombia Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit Tuesday January 30 (via Yahoo) Mexico Seeks Deeper U.S. Ties, Disagrees on Cuba By Anthony Boadle WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda, voicing differences over Cuba, Colombia and the drug war, met with Bush administration officials on Tuesday to discuss a new agenda for Mexico and the United States. Castaneda met White House National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell to prepare for a meeting next month between President George W. Bush and Mexican President Vicente Fox. Bush's Feb. 16 visit to Fox's ranch in Mexico will be his first foreign trip, an honor reserved for Canada by the last three U.S presidents. "He did this to send a strong signal of the importance he wants to bestow on Latin America," Castaneda told foreign policy experts at a Washington think tank. Fox, a rancher and former Coca Cola executive who last year ended seven decades of one-party rule in Mexico, seeks to build a deeper relationship with the United States on the commercial success of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which created a free trade bloc with the United States, Canada and Mexico. But Castaneda outlined policy stances that will not jibe with Washington's views, starting with opposition to the four-decade-old U.S. trade embargo against Cuba. Mexico will continue to view the U.S. embargo as a "counterproductive" policy that seeks to isolate Cuba rather than engage the Communist-run country, he said. Fox intends to expand Mexican trade and investment in Cuba, while pushing more aggressively for democratic change and the defense of human rights, his foreign minister said. "We have nothing to be ashamed of anymore," Castaneda said, in reference to Mexico achieving full democracy under Fox. War And Peace In Colombia In Colombia, where the United States is funding a military offensive against cocaine and heroin production and guerrillas that protect the drug trade, Mexico's new president will stand strongly for a negotiated settlement to the civil war. "It is our understanding that the military expenditure is for counter-narcotics and not counter-insurgency," Castaneda said, underlying Mexico's support for a political settlement to avoid a bloody confrontation in Colombia. Fox sent special envoy Andres Rozenthal to the Colombian jungle 10 days ago to meet leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the largest Marxist rebel movement. FARC is balking at peace talks with the Colombian government, in San Vicente del Caguan in the demilitarized zone. Over the past six months, U.S. officials increasingly have blurred the lines between drug enforcement and fighting the rebels, accusing the FARC of being a drug cartel and thus fair game in the coming military push into southern Colombia. "Political negotiations are the only way to go. It is the way the Colombian people have chosen to go," Castaneda said. Fox will try to play a helpful role in defusing tensions between Colombia and Venezuela, where populist President Hugo Chavez has emerged as a leading voice against U.S. policy in the troubled Andean region. "That is an area where we can be particularly useful," Castaneda said. Mexico has revived the so-called Group of Three with Venezuela and Colombia that will hold a summit of the three presidents in Caracas in early April. Drugs And Migrants Fox has called for the abolition of the annual U.S. evaluation of drug producing and transit countries, which is expected to be a hurdle for closer ties. "We consider the entire certification process to be counterproductive, unilateral and an irritant," Castaneda said. "The president is very clear on this." The Mexican president also has been outspoken on the need to improve the lot of Mexican migrants who -- legally or illegally -- enter the United States seeking work. Hundreds perish each year of dehydration or exposure to the cold crossing the 2,000-mile (3,000-km) border. In Arizona, ranchers have organized posses to hunt down migrants on their land. "The violence on the border and the number of Mexican deaths is intolerable," Castaneda said. Fox has a long-term vision of NAFTA economic integration and convergence that goes beyond goods and investment to the free movement of people, like in the European Union. One proposal is to create a new immigration category specifically to cover Mexican temporary laborers -- 55,000 of whom entered the United States to work last year, Castaneda said. A former Marxist academic who was educated in the United States and France, Castaneda was strongly opposed to Mexico joining NAFTA in 1994, but has become a supporter of the pact. Pending trade disputes over trucking, tuna, sugar and the Mexican telecommunications market are "moving forward" and being resolved in a businesslike fashion, he said. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytcamer-01.30.01-17:34:51-4965