FOX SEEKS NEW COOPERATIVE ERA FOR N. AMERICA

SAN CRISTOBAL, Mexico, Aug. 13 - President-elect Vicente Fox said today
that a closed and often fortified border between the United States and
Mexico has failed both countries and that the time has come for Americans
to see Mexican workers and resources as an "opportunity, not a threat."

Fox, who meets with President Clinton at the White House next week,
proposed creating a European Union-style partnership in North America, in
which the United States and Canada would help create jobs and raise income
levels in Mexico.

"We must be better friends, we must be better neighbors, we must be better
partners," Fox said at his family ranch here in central Mexico in his first
interview with American reporters since his landmark election July 2. His
comments during the wide-ranging, 90-minute conversation represented the
most detailed description to date of his vision of U.S.-Mexican relations.

"By building up walls, by putting up arms, by dedicating billions of
dollars like every [U.S.] border state is doing to avoid migration is not
the way to go," said Fox, the first opposition candidate to win the Mexican
presidency in 71 years. "It has not been the way to go in the whole 20th
century. Instead of solving the problem, it grew."

Throughout the interview, conducted in fluent English, Fox spoke with a
farmer's passion about the problems of Mexico's 40 million poor people and
with a business executive's vocabulary about the need for "long-term
planning" and "synergy" in building a new, cooperative cross-border
relationship.

He said his top priority would be to reduce the gigantic economic gap
between the United States and Mexico, the sad reality that is driving an
estimated 300,000 Mexican migrants across the border each year, legally and
illegally, to seek work in the world's most prosperous economy. As many as
7 million migrants now live in the United States, a number equivalent to
about 7 percent of Mexico's population.

"It's not possible to have a harmonious, stable border; it's not possible
to solve the migration problem as it has been up until today if we don't
solve that gap problem where a worker in Mexico earns $5 a day and a worker
in the United States earns $60 a day," said Fox, who got an early taste of
the nation to the north as a boy selling vegetables from his family ranch
to buyers along the U.S. border, and later during his 15-year career with
the Coca-Cola Co.

Fox noted that Portugal and Greece have been brought closer to economic
parity with the more prosperous countries of England, France and Germany
over the past 25 years though cooperation in a common European market. In
the same way, and with the help of Canada and the United States, Mexico one
day, too, could be a more equal economic partner, he said. Fox said he
would like to see creation of a development fund through the North American
Free Trade Agreement, similar to the $35 billion-a-year European Union
development fund, which helps create jobs and increase income in poorer
countries.

Fox criticized recent vigilante activity in the American southwest, where
ranchers have been capturing and detaining illegal Mexican migrants at
gunpoint. One Mexican was killed by a rancher's bullet in May when he asked
for a drink of water. "Mexicans are being killed, and that's not fair," Fox
said. "We are better and more intelligent" than to allow that to continue.

Speaking just after attending Roman Catholic Mass with his 81-year-old
mother, Fox vowed that his strong religious convictions would not affect
public policy. Although Mexico is more than 90 percent Catholic, it has
enforced for more than 150 years some of the world's strictest laws
separating church and state.

Fox has been stung by critics who say he will use his office to press his
views on such issues as abortion. The legislature in his home state of
Guanajuato recently extended the local ban on abortion to include rape
victims. That provoked a tidal wave of outrage and raised new fears about
Fox and his pro-Catholic party, the National Action Party (PAN), which
controls the Guanajuato legislature.

Fox said today that he believes "life begins at the moment of conception,"
but he vowed never to "impose that on anybody."

Fox also pledged to end the impunity that he said the country's drug
traffickers have enjoyed and to do away with the relatively luxurious jail
cells convicted drug dealers often command. He promised, too, to fight the
corruption that has permeated the highest levels of Mexican government and
law enforcement.

Fox, wearing black jeans and a new pair of cowboy boots given him by
Argentine President Fernando de la Rua, made time today for a horseback
ride. His big gray quarter horse, July 2--named for Fox's birthday and the
day he won the presidency--pulled up lame, so he clopped along the
cobblestones of his family compound on a different mount, stopping to chat
with several dozen fans who cheered him from the wrought-iron front gate.

Fox is a local hero. He grew up as one of nine children on his ranch here,
just across from the church in the San Cristobal town square. His family
still works the ranch, raising broccoli, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts,
and making leather boots.

Fox's interaction with the crowd at the front gate marks him as a new kind
of Mexican president--a man who mixes U.S.-style campaigning and business
sense with down-home appeal. He said he plans to spend as much time as
possible out of his office and to travel across Mexico to press his ideas.
"I want to be a promotional president," he said. "I want to inspire people."

Reclining in a deep leather chair in an open interior courtyard of the
Spanish-style hacienda--just outside the bedroom where he slept as a
child--Fox said the United States needs Mexican development. The United
States is Mexico's main trading partner; Mexico is the second-largest U.S.
trading partner after Canada.

Fox said that the booming U.S. economy has relied on Mexican gardeners and
manual laborers, but that a new breed of Mexicans is emerging from
universities with highly technical backgrounds in software engineering. He
said he hopes those engineers could help solve America's severe shortage of
high-tech workers and take their place alongside immigrants from India and
Bangladesh.

"The United States knows very well that you need people to grow," Fox said.
"The United States economy cannot grow at rates of 5 percent or more if you
do not have Mexicans there." He said he did not understand why Mexicans
should be so unwelcome in a country that was built by immigrants.

"What I propose here is that we build up a plan, an intelligent, creative,
innovative plan, whereby we look for economic convergence . . . to start
narrowing gaps on all fronts, in inflation, in interest rates, in income,"
Fox said. "We will never be that good neighbor, that good friend, that good
partner, as long as Mexico is lagging way, way behind on development."

Fox said he also plans to spur Mexican economic growth by seeking out new
foreign investment, with the aim of doubling it to $20 billion annually
within three years. That, combined with even more emphasis on Mexican
exports, could bring an annual economic growth rate of 7 percent in coming
years, he said.

Fox said also that his most difficult task over the next year will be
fiscal reform. He needs money to fund his ambitious plans to increase
spending on education and social programs, but he was harshly criticized
recently when an adviser said publicly that Fox was considering a tax on
staple foods and medicine. Fox said today that he will work to to increase
Mexico's tax collection rate--one of the lowest in Latin America--to help
pay for his programs.

On illegal drugs, Fox declared that drug dealers in Mexico too often are
confident they will not be arrested and that if they are they are able to
bribe their way free. Fox said his proposals to streamline federal police
functions would reduce those problems.

He added that he believes drug traffickers deserve severe punishment and
that he would be willing to extradite suspected drug dealers wanted in the
United States.

Overall, Fox asserted, the illegal drug trade must be fought by a
multinational effort, and he said he would ask the United States to end its
unilateral drug certification process. That process--which ties U.S.
foreign aid to an annual judgment by Washington on whether certain
countries are doing enough to fight drugs--is seen throughout Latin America
as arrogant and unfair.

"It is not fair, it's not working, and it doesn't serve a purpose," Fox said.