Threat or promise? 2 views across border

International Herald Tribune ^ | Mar. 23, 2005 | James C. McKinley, Jr.

[Crackingham]

When U.S. Customs officials discovered the latest tunnel under the border here, they were stunned. Complete with a cement floor and an intercom system, the passage found last month ran nearly 200 meters, or about 650 feet, from a house on one side of a rusty metal fence, under two streets and an apartment complex, to an unassuming tract home in California.

Though more elaborate, the tunnel is not unlike the 15 others found during the 1990s, built by drug cartels. But everything in the world after Sept. 11, 2001, has taken on a different hue. Today tunnels like this one are where the failures of drug policy, border control and immigration reform meet ever-pressing issues of national security.

U.S. officials fear the tunnels could be used just as easily to smuggle terrorists and explosives as cocaine or illegal aliens.

That confluence of worries forms the backdrop for a meeting on Wednesday in Texas of President George W. Bush, President Vicente Fox of Mexico and Prime Minister Paul Martin of Canada. But where issues converge, the interests of the United States and its neighbors may not.

For Bush and the Republican-led Congress he must work with, security is on top of the agenda. For Mexico, it is immigration changes that would open the border to a freer flow of migrant workers.

For liberal Canada, it is the imperative of foreign and domestic policies that increasingly diverge from Washington's conservative consensus.

Senior Bush administration officials said Tuesday that the three leaders were not expected to announce any concrete agreements after the one-day meeting at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, which will be followed by a lunch at the Bush ranch in Crawford.