CROSS-BORDER TRUCKING STILL FACES BARRIERS

Another milestone, another roadblock.

So goes the touch-and-go story of cross-border trucking under the North
American Free Trade Agreement - a tale of long delays and detours,
jump-starts and grinding halts in the effort to allow Mexican 18-wheel rigs
into the United States.

It's a story of partisan politics, flaring tempers, eager anticipation and
crushing disappointments.

Seven years after the first Mexican truck was supposed to begin hauling its
cargo on U.S. highways, the end of the story has not been written.

Canadian trucks have been on U.S. highways since 1982, but officially, not
a single Mexican truck has been driven north of the 20-mile commercial zone
on the border.

"It was a charade from the beginning," said Jorge Gonzalez, a NAFTA expert
at Trinity University in San Antonio. "In the end, they're just little
barriers to something that's eventually going to happen."

The barriers have included a moratorium on Mexican trucks, stiff fines for
Mexican rigs found in the United States, the ongoing drug war, national
security, an ocean of safety regulations and fighting over inspection
stations along the border.

The points of contention focus on whether Mexico has the ability to
maintain safe trucks with working brakes, clean engines, alert drivers and
up-to-date equipment. Deeper issues, such as competition for jobs between
Mexican long-haul drivers and truckers in the United States, underlined
many of the fights.

"For the U.S., it was a political decision," said Sam Banks, who was deputy
U.S. Customs Service commissioner during NAFTA negotiations. "They were
scared to death that some Mexican truck's brakes would fail, they would run
into a school bus full of kids, and anybody who had approved it would lose
in their next election. Š Nobody ever came up with any hard-core facts that
proved to me" that Mexican trucks were too dangerous to allow inside the
United States.

The wrangling was complicated by the fact that everyone - labor unions,
civil-rights groups, environmental advocates, political parties, truckers,
customs brokers and motorists - has an interest in the issue.

"Depending on who you ask, everyone is going to have a different
viewpoint," said Sandra Scott, international trade and government affairs
advocate for Roadway Express, a trucking company. "There is no common ground."

But after nearly a decade of hassles, it's beginning to look as if Mexican
trucks could be on U.S. roads as early as February, federal transportation
officials said.

President Bush formally lifted the moratorium on open borders on Dec. 6,
after Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta concluded that inspectors were
ready to make sure that Mexico trucks followed U.S. safety standards.

As many as 83 Mexican trucking companies have been granted permission by
the Federal Motor Carriers Safety Administration to operate in the United
States. Now, they must go through an audit of their safety procedures
before they are allowed on U.S. highways, said Federal Motor Carriers
Safety Administration spokeswoman Suzy Bonhert.

Out of more than 25,000 trucking companies in Mexico, only 142 have asked
for permission to operate in the United States. Likewise, U.S. trucking
companies don't seem to be interested in operating on the mountainous and
sometimes poorly maintained roads in Mexico or in dealing with a
complicated customs process, Scott said.

To address those concerns, Bush and Mexican President Vicente Fox in March
signed a 22-point plan to increase security while speeding up commerce and
tourist crossings.

Customs officials from both countries have also met to try and streamline
their processes.

"I think until we realize that there has to be standardization, there has
to be some type of synergy going on between the three countries, I don't
think anything's going to change too much," Scott said.

Mexico has not passed rules regarding U.S. drivers on Mexican highways. In
the beginning, officials in Mexico said they would be flexible in their
standards for American truckers. But the delays have caused bitterness, and
Mexico now says that it will wait to see how their drivers are treated in
the United States before deciding on the rules for their own highways.

"We are interested in safety here, as well," said Mexican Congressman
Tarcisio Navarrete Montes de Oca, secretary of the House Commission on
Exterior Relations.

Signed at the end of 1992, NAFTA's goal was to streamline trade between
Mexico, Canada and the United States by removing barriers such as tariffs.

In 2000, trade between the United States and Mexico skyrocketed from $81
billion to $246 billion - and 80 percent of that cargo is carried between
the United States and Mexico on 18-wheel rigs. Most of them cross Texas.

Mexican trucks were supposed to be allowed free access in 1995 to border
states. By 2000, they would be allowed to drive throughout the country.

But in 1995, under pressure from Teamsters and labor unions worried about
competition for jobs and unequal safety standards, President Clinton
imposed a moratorium on the trucks "until there's safety (in Mexico) that
we can know about."

The moratorium came after then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush told Clinton that
there were plenty of inspectors on the border, and that Texas was ready to
handle incoming trucks.

That was also only a few years after the United States used military force
to help find and kill Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar.

Resistance to allowing easy access to Mexican vehicles was based in part on
suspicions that they would turn into a brigade of drug traffickers with
immunity to the law.

Bush assumed the presidency in January 2001 and became a vocal advocate for
opening the borders to Mexican trucks. A few months later, a NAFTA
arbitration panel decided that the moratorium violated the treaty and that
the United States should expedite efforts to open the borders.

Once again, however, Bush faced resistance from trucking and labor groups.
In August 2001, Congress infuriated the Mexican government by passing stiff
safety restrictions for Mexican trucks.

Before the borders opened, more inspectors needed to be hired along the
border, Congress said. Mexico would have to limit road hours for the
drivers and create a database for commercial driver's licenses.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, issues of national security
trumped everything else.

Fox called Congress' actions racist and said that he would be equally harsh
on U.S. trucks if the standards were not more fair. Meanwhile, a group of
Mexican trucking companies sued the federal government, accusing the United
States of discrimination.

The delays postponed Bush's plans to open the borders by Jan. 1, 2002.
Nevertheless, the movement began to pick up some speed.

Congress appropriated $54 million to border states to beef up inspection
stations along the border.

Another deadline for lifting the moratorium came and went in May when an
inspector general's report on truck safety was not finished. The deadline
was then set for July - and missed again when the report was finished, but
Mineta hadn't signed it. It happened again in August.

Mexican truckers were ready to give up on open borders altogether.

"Why should we harmonize with the United States at this point?" a
frustrated Manuel Gomez Garcia, president of the national trucking union
Canacar, said at a trucking conference. "Why shouldn't we just leave all of
our borders closed?"

Newspapers in Mexico ran editorials slamming the United States on the
issue. One cartoon depicted Pancho Villa behind the wheel of a rig, guns
blazing, with hundreds of shoddy trucks gunning their engines behind him.

Then in early December, Bush lifted the moratorium.

A few days later, however, environmental, labor and trucking groups - which
had stymied efforts to open the borders for nearly a decade by arguing
about safety issues - asked for an injunction based on environmental concerns.

Analysts say that delaying tactics are wearing thin, and that like it or
not, the borders are destined to be open to Mexican trucks.

"I don't think this is a process they can stop anymore," Gonzalez said.