BUSH AND FOX HOPE NATIONS WILL BECOME BETTER AMIGOS

MEXICO CITY, Jan. 30 — Americans have long seen Mexico as a river of
illegal drugs and immigrants flowing north. But if the nations' two new
leaders have their way, it may soon be seen as a fountain of energy, labor
and trade.

Presidents Bush and Vicente Fox will meet on Feb. 16 at Mr. Fox's ranch, in
Mr. Bush's first border crossing as commander in chief. They have more in
common than a taste for cowboy boots and enchiladas. Both have ideas that
could transform the political and economic relationship between the
superpower and the striving nation to the south.

"Our common border is no longer a line that divides us, but a region that
unites our nations, reflecting our common aspirations, values and culture,"
the secretary of state, Gen. Colin L. Powell, said today in Washington at
his first news conference, held jointly with the new Mexican foreign
minister, Jorge Casteneda.

Seeing the border as a symbol of unity, calling Mexico and the United
States next-door neighbors with common needs and intertwined fates, has
been long been Mr. Fox's political refrain. It is a fairly new tune for
American foreign policy, but the changes, symbolic and substantial, are
already happening.

Mr. Bush wants to greatly expand trade across the border, calling commerce
"the long-term solution" for illegal immigration. Both presidents say that
if Mexico's economy becomes stronger, fewer Mexicans will head north
looking for work.

"The thing that really has to be done to solve this problem is to continue
to help the Mexican economy grow, so that jobs are in the south, so that
the great magnet is no longer just in the north, but it is also within
Mexico," General Powell said today.

Since Mr. Fox's election six months ago, illegal migration has fallen off
along the border, from California to Texas, if the plummeting number of
arrests is any sign.

But millions of Mexicans work illegally north of the border, and American
labor leaders and senior Republican senators, as well as the Federal
Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, say it is time to legalize them.

The goal should be to let them "come into America legally to work, have
their rights protected and accumulate human and financial capital to take
back to Mexico," said Sen. Phil Gramm, a Texas Republican.

Mexico is sending more than sweat and muscle: on Monday, it started selling
50 megawatts a day of electricity to California, enough to power 50,000
homes, to help the state in its energy crisis. That Americans would turn to
Mexico for something so basic could be a harbinger of something big.

Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have been talking for months about
the need for a hemispheric energy policy — "an approach that looks at all
of North America as one giant market," as Mr. Cheney put it. If both sides
agree, the United States could invest in Mexican power plants and get cheap
electricity in return.

There is even talk in Washington of ending the annual rite of certification
— a political process, which Mexico finds humiliating, in which the White
House weighs whether the Mexicans are doing their part in the war on drugs.

It did not hurt that Mexico's Supreme Court had just ruled that hundreds of
drug suspects may be extradited from Mexican jails by American law
enforcement agencies.

All this is music to Mr. Fox's politically attuned ears. He wants it all to
happen — and more, much more. In time, he says, the two nations can be so
integrated, economically and politically, that the border would be more
like the common wall of adjoining homes and less like a militarized frontier.

It may not be that wild an idea. Mexico is "the house next door," Mr.
Greenspan argued at a closed meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee
in 1995, when Mexico's economy was near collapse and the Fed stepped in
with a multibillion-dollar bailout.

"The house catches on fire, and cinders going in our direction threaten to
burn our house down," he said, according to transcripts of the internal
debates released last week. "Can we say we are not going to help them put
out the fire?"