A rchive Date
[ 14-01-2004 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[http://www.canoe.com/Columnists/weston.html
Reheated hash
By GREG WESTON - Sun Media
January 14, 2004
MONTERREY, Mexico - Prime Minister Paul Martin's first-ever meeting with U.S. President George W. Bush over breakfast here yesterday turned into a magic show of diplomatic illusion, the two leaders appearing to solve major issues faster than they could eat their scrambled eggs.
For days, Martin and his officials had been downplaying the power breakfast as nothing more than a friendly first encounter, repeatedly dismissing any chance the two men would be resolving any key bilateral issues.
They were right about that - all of the problem-solving had obviously happened long before the breakfast.
Martin and Bush hadn't buttered their toast when Canadian Foreign Affairs officials were handing out press releases announcing agreements on two of the four issues supposedly being pressed at that moment by Martin.
First, the U.S. has agreed that, in future, it won't seize and deport Canadian citizens to foreign prisons on suspicion of terrorist links without first notifying senior government officials in Ottawa.
It is worth noting the U.S. is reserving the absolute right to go on nabbing Canadian citizens and shipping them to foreign hellholes - they just won't do it without a courtesy call to Ottawa.
The move follows the alarming case of Canadian software engineer Maher Arar, arrested by the Americans and deported to Syria in 2002 on apparently unfounded suspicions of terrorist links. Arar was already rotting in a Syrian prison before American authorities shared this news with Canadian government officials.
Arar was returned to Canada earlier this year, and the handling of his case by Canadian police and other officials is now the subject of two separate government inquiries.
In the meantime, the case stands as an embarrassing symbol of Canadian diplomatic impotence, and the strained state of relations between the two countries during the final years of Jean Chretien's administration.
The second diplomatic miracle performed by Bush and Martin between mouthfuls of breakfast sausage was a partial lifting of a ban on Canadian companies getting any of the $18 billion in U.S. reconstruction contracts in Iraq.
The U.S. had previously decreed that Canada and other countries that did not support the war in Iraq would not benefit from reconstruction contracts.
While few Canadian companies have shown the slightest interest in the first $5 billion of U.S. deals in Iraq, they will be free to bid on the next round of work.
The operative word is "bid," the arrangement offering no guarantees whatever that any Canadian company will actually win a dime of U.S. contract money.
Like the agreement on deporting Canadian citizens to foreign jails, the "breakthrough" on the Iraq contracts was a done deal last week, and is aimed primarily at helping the Bush administration mend fences with France, Germany and other European countries that opposed the Iraq war.
The two other issues left completely unresolved at the end of the Martin-Bush miracle breakfast happen to be the most important to Canada.
Officials said fully 45 of the total 75 minutes the two leaders spent together was devoted to discussion of the continuing closure of the U.S. border to Canadian beef following the latest mad-cow scare.
Martin said he thought he had successfully convinced Bush that "this is a North American industry ... that our countries have to seek a North American solution, and we can't be piecing one off against the other."
For his part, the U.S. president said after the meeting only that "this is an issue that's going to require close co-ordination between our two countries."
Reopen the border? Not over this breakfast.
No meeting of Canadian and American minds would be complete, of course, without the usual dead-end discussion of the softwood lumber dispute, now entering its third decade of discord.
Martin said the point he made with Bush about the punitive American tariffs on Canadian softwood exports is "essentially we have a free trade agreement and the objective is ... free trade across the border." Stop the presses.
Senior Canadian officials said yesterday they expect a more extensive meeting with Bush within the next two months either in Washington, or in a "border state," probably near a major trade crossing such as the Windsor-Detroit bridge.
At the end of their landmark breakfast, Martin and Bush emerged with big happy smiles for the cameras.
An upbeat Martin concluded: "As far as I'm concerned, I thought the vibes were very good on both sides."
Most important of all, there was no egg on either face.
Greg Weston is Sun Media's national political columnist, his columns appear Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@tor.sunpub.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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