Condoleezza Rice's first visit to Mexico as US secretary of state comes during a fragile period for relations with the US' neighbor to the south.
Mexico already differed with the US over President George W. Bush's policy in Iraq and border issues. But politicians there now accuse the Bush administration of interfering with Mexico's internal affairs.
There's also frustration by Mexican leaders over Bush's stalled immigration proposals.
Rice was meeting yesterday in Mexico City with President Vicente Fox and Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez.
The one-day trip comes a week after Rice put off a visit to Canada after it opted out of a US-led anti-ballistic missile defense program.
Bush plans to meet with the leaders of Mexico and Canada on March 23 in Texas, in part to try to warm chilly relationships with both countries.
Politicians in Mexico have denounced US warnings about border violence, human rights abuses, drug trafficking and possible election-related instability.
Mexico and the US are also divided over the treatment of Mexicans convicted of capital crimes in the US.
The Bush administration has instructed state courts to give 51 Mexicans facing the death penalty new hearings on claims that they were not allowed to see their diplomats. The International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled last year that the convictions violated the Vienna Convention -- ratified by the US in 1969 -- by not providing the Mexicans with consular access.
Just this week the Bush administration pulled out of the specific part of the Vienna Convention that death penalty opponents have used to fight the capital sentences for foreigners, the Washington Post reported yesterday.
Since taking office in 2000, Fox has made migration in the US a top foreign policy priority. Bush, too, has put immigration issues toward the top of his agenda, its centerpiece a guest worker program. But the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks derailed those plans. Congress, wary of doing favors for those in the US illegally, focused instead on border security.
Last fall, it appeared the immigration proposals would move along when then-secretary of state Colin Powell traveled to Mexico to reiterate Bush's commitment to them. But little has been said about them since then.
On Wednesday, Rice told Univision, a Spanish-language television network, that she hoped Bush's package of proposals to overhaul immigration laws would move forward soon.
"But it's a very difficult issue," she said, "and we do need to make certain that it's done right."
Nauru has started selling passports to fund climate action, but is so far struggling to attract new citizens to the low-lying, largely barren island in the Pacific Ocean. Nauru, one of the world’s smallest nations, has a novel plan to fund its fight against climate change by selling so-called “Golden Passports.” Selling for US$105,000 each, Nauru plans to drum up more than US$5 million in the first year of the “climate resilience citizenship” program. Almost six months after the scheme opened in February, Nauru has so far approved just six applications — covering two families and four individuals. Despite the slow start —
‘THEY KILLED HOPE’: Four presidential candidates were killed in the 1980s and 1990s, and Miguel Uribe’s mother died during a police raid to free her from Pablo Escobar Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe has died two months after being shot at a campaign rally, his family said on Monday, as the attack rekindled fears of a return to the nation’s violent past. The 39-year-old conservative senator, a grandson of former Colombian president Julio Cesar Turbay (1978-1982), was shot in the head and leg on June 7 at a rally in the capital, Bogota, by a suspected 15-year-old hitman. Despite signs of progress in the past few weeks, his doctors on Saturday announced he had a new brain hemorrhage. “To break up a family is the most horrific act of violence that
North Korean troops have started removing propaganda loudspeakers used to blare unsettling noises along the border, South Korea’s military said on Saturday, days after Seoul’s new administration dismantled ones on its side of the frontier. The two countries had already halted propaganda broadcasts along the demilitarized zone, Seoul’s military said in June after the election of South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, who is seeking to ease tensions with Pyongyang. The South Korean Ministry of National Defense on Monday last week said it had begun removing loudspeakers from its side of the border as “a practical measure aimed at helping ease
DEADLY TASTE TEST: Erin Patterson tried to kill her estranged husband three times, police said in one of the major claims not heard during her initial trial Australia’s recently convicted mushroom murderer also tried to poison her husband with bolognese pasta and chicken korma curry, according to testimony aired yesterday after a suppression order lapsed. Home cook Erin Patterson was found guilty last month of murdering her husband’s parents and elderly aunt in 2023, lacing their beef Wellington lunch with lethal death cap mushrooms. A series of potentially damning allegations about Patterson’s behavior in the lead-up to the meal were withheld from the jury to give the mother-of-two a fair trial. Supreme Court Justice Christopher Beale yesterday rejected an application to keep these allegations secret. Patterson tried to kill her
RSS