国际英语新闻：North American leaders defend free trade agreement

NEW ORLEANS, The United States, April 22 (Xinhua) -- The leaders of the United States, Mexico and Canada defended the 14-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) at the conclusion of an annual summit here on Tuesday.

    "Now is not the time to renegotiate NAFTA or walk away from NAFTA. Now is the time to make it work better for all our people and now is time to reduce trade barriers worldwide," Bush told a joint news conference with his Mexican counterpart Felipe Calderon and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

    Turning on an abortive bill on a free trade agreement with Columbia, Bush blamed Democrats for their efforts to block it on Congress.

    "It makes no sense to me to say that Columbian goods can come into our country duty free, yet our goods can't go into Columbia duty free," Bush said.

    He said that a failure by the U.S. Congress to pass the agreement would send "a terrible signal" to neighboring countries.

Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper (L), U.S. President George W. Bush (C) and Mexico's President Felipe Calderon (R) sit down for breakfast during the second day of the North American Leaders' Summit in New Orleans, Louisiana, April 22, 2008

    "An agreement with Columbia would level the playing field," he said, adding that it was a "bad decision" for Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives, to have blocked a vote on the deal.

    Pelosi has refused to schedule a vote on the agreement with Columbia, a move Bush said could effectively kill it this year.

    U.S. Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, who are locked in a bitter struggle for the Democratic party's presidential nomination, have threatened to renegotiate NAFTA or even pull back from it if elected.

    Bush also expressed concern over the rising prices of oil for U.S. consumers as it surged to a fresh high above 119 U.S. dollars a barrel.

U.S. President George W. Bush, (C), Mexico's President Felipe Calderon (L), and Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper pose for photos before the start of the North American Leaders Summit dinner in New Orleans, Louisiana, April 21, 2008.

But he denied that the U.S. economy is being dragged down into a recession by the subprime mortgages meltdown.

    "We are not in a recession, we are in a slowdown," said Bush, who has repeatedly expressed confidence in the resilience of the U.S. economy.

    Echoing Bush's comments, Calderon said that "this is not the time to even think about amending it or canceling it."

    "This is the time to strengthen and reinvigorate this free trade agreement among our three countries," Calderon said.

    The Mexican president said that NAFTA has helped create jobs, improved services and enhanced people's quality of life and that "we want these benefits to reach more and more of our citizens."

    Calderon announced that the next North American Leaders' Summit will be held in Mexico in 2009.

    In his remarks, Harper said NAFTA was "critically important" for jobs and posterity on both sides of the border, saying that it would be a mistake to renegotiate it.

    Harper stressed the importance of energy security, describing it as a "critical part of NAFTA arrangements."

    "Canada is the biggest and most stable supplier of energy to the United States in the world," said the prime minister.

    The press conference capped the North American leaders' annual summit under the framework of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) launched in March 2005.

    Earlier in the day, they met with top business leaders from the three countries before heading into formal talks.

    Apart from the free trade issue, the three leaders also spent the two days at the summit discussing broad topics such as food safety, emergency responses, energy supply, border security, environmental protection and organized crime.