TOLUCA, Mexico: President Barack Obama headed south yesterday for a North American leaders’ summit marked by frictions between the “three amigos” of Mexico, Canada and the United States.
President Enrique Pena Nieto will host Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper at the ornate state government palace in Toluca, near Mexico City, for the day of talks.
The partners of the 20-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) are locked in several thorny disputes likely to surface in the talks and at a joint news conference at day’s end.
More than 5,000 soldiers and police officers patrolled city streets lined with metal fences, while the leftist opposition planned to hold a protest near the venue. Pena Nieto has sought to turn attention away from Mexico’s security problems, which have left more than 77,000 people dead in a seven-year-old drug conflict, and towards trade and his sweeping economic and energy reforms.
Although the allies want to find ways to improve NAFTA, their talks come with some discord on other issues. Obama will no doubt face a new entreaty from Harper to quickly make up his mind on the Keystone XL pipeline project, which would carry crude from Canada’s oil sands across the continental United States to Texas.
Canada is deeply frustrated at delays in the project, which is awaiting a construction permit and has caught Obama’s administration between its backers in the environmental community and claims it will create thousands
of jobs. AFP
