Jelly-bean diplomacy: Bush, Harper parry suspicions

Aug 22, 2007, 2:36 GMT

Montebello, Canada - North American leaders Tuesday tried to squelch suspicions about their close collaboration, reassuring sceptics that they are not scheming to secretly create a common market, build a superhighway or divert water resources.

Instead, Mexican President Felipe Calderon, US President George W Bush and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper signalled their intention to go full speed ahead with their two-year-old Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) that aims to cut through red tape at border crossings and build up regional security.

The leaders just finished a two-day meeting with 30 business leaders who form a panel of permanent advisors to the SPP.

Critics charge that the SPP is intended to create a sort of common market without legislative input, because the streamlining is being done exclusively at the executive and regulatory level.

Social activists, war protestors and trade unionists loudly denounced the summit as overly secretive, anti-democratic, subservient to the interests of big business and a threat to individual sovereignty.

Speaking to reporters, the leaders emphasized that North America must cooperate more closely on trade in order to compete with the growing might of Asia and Europe.

For Harper, the jelly-bean maker who sits on the panel answered the sceptics. The businessman described how impossible it was to manufacture jelly beans to two different sets of rules governing jelly bean contents.

'They have to maintain two separate inventories,' Harper said.

'Is the sovereignty of Canada going to fall apart if we standardize the jelly bean? You know, I don't think so,' he said.

Bush said he was 'amused' by the speculation, and charged that critics were trying to 'frighten our fellow citizens into believing that relations between us are harmful for our respective peoples.'

In the final document, the three men pledged to continue building the SPP as a 'fortress North America' and forge ahead with plans for next year's summit in the US.

Items on the table for next year include:

- Increasing the harmonization of regulations and more agreements on border security, food safety and energy policy.

- Continued streamlining of regulations in the chemical, automotive and telecommunications industries.

- Reviewing elements of any trade agreements signed after the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and re-negotiating those which inhibit 'North American competitiveness.'

- Cooperating to catch and prosecute people who violate intellectual property and counterfeiting laws.

- Ensuring continental food safety.

- Reducing barriers to the deployment of new and clean technologies, working together on developing bio-fuels, agreeing on more common energy efficiency policies.

- Share information to coordinate the reporting of carbon emission.

- Further streamline border traffic, provide more efficient screening of airline baggage, better detect radioactive material in cargo and better manage borders during a pandemic.

- Seek better border policing.

- Enhance the 'trusted-traveller' programme, where certain people would be able to cross borders with pre-clearance. Unblock the US- Mexico and US-Canadian border crossings.

- Plan for coordination in disaster relief.