| Report on a future plan for North America crafted at AU
BY MIKE UNGER Sitting around a conference table Thursday inside the New Mexico Avenue suite that houses AU’s Office of International Affairs, Robert Pastor and a group of distinguished experts began applying the finishing touches to a plan that could shape the future of North America.
Photo by Jeff Watts
Members of the task force creating a plan for North America, from left, VP Robert Pastor, Thomas d’Aquino, president of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, former Massachussetts governor William Weld, and Andres Rozental, president of the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations.
|
Pastor, AU’s vice president of international affairs and director of the Center for North American Studies, sits on a Council on Foreign Relations task force that will issue a report as early as next month, one the group hopes will become the preeminent planning document for the future of the continent. “The consensus is that whatever one feels about [the North American Free Trade Agreement], North America is now more integrated economically and socially than ever before, but it lacks direction,” Pastor said. “At the same time transformations in Europe, the expansion of the [European Union], the rise of Asia, and the impact of 9/11 require that we take new and bold steps to recover the North American advantage. “This report will set the agenda for the next decade, and I’m particularly proud and excited that the Center for North American Studies has played a central role in preparing materials for the task force,” he said. Ninety dignitaries, 30 each from Mexico, Canada, and the United States, comprise the task force. Thursday, a select group of chairs and cochairs, including former Massachusetts governor William Weld and Andres Rozental, president of the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations, came to AU to work on the draft report. “Bob Pastor has been a driving force of the project—and a conscience,” Weld said. The task force was charged with reviewing five areas of policy in which it was believed greater cooperation among the three nations was needed: deepening economic integration, reducing the development gap, harmonizing regulatory policy, enhancing security, and devising better trilateral institutions to manage conflicts. “It’s going to be the first major report on the future of North America since NAFTA was signed, sealed, and delivered,” Rozental said. “The purpose is forward thinking, which the governments haven’t been doing. There are many issues—commerce, security, migration. We’re going to make some very bold proposals.” The report should be issued by mid-March or early April. A possible summit bringing together the leaders of the three countries is being discussed for the same time, and Pastor is hopeful that the task force report will become the centerpiece of that meeting. “We would like for our report to be the agenda from which the three leaders could begin discussing ways to transform our historical relationship into a community of three nations,” he said. AU’s Center for North American Studies is the largest such organization on the continent, and the task force will recommend the creation of dozens of similar centers throughout each of the three nations, Pastor said. “I believe we will not remain unique, we will just be the pioneer,” he said. |
