Argentina's Kirchner tells Mexico's Fox to mind his own business

Amid the continuing fallout from last week’s stalemated Summit of the Americas, President Néstor Kirchner yesterday warned his Mexican counterpart Vicente Fox — who criticized him for opposing a United States-led free trade regional pact — to mind his own business, even suggesting Fox was a US puppet.

"Let President Fox mind about Mexico. I was voted into office by the Argentine people and I will engage in defending Argentines in the due way," said Kirchner during a rally in the Greater Buenos Aires district of Ezeiza.

In media interviews earlier this week, Fox said that as host of the 34-nation gathering, Kirchner was responsible for seeking consensus on restarting talks on the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) pact.

"Instead, the impression several of us got there is that the president’s thinking was directed more at satisfying public opinion in Argentina, and involved more with Argentines’ image of the president, than achieving a successful summit, with American integration," [Fox] said.

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Kirchner, popular at home for standing up to the International Monetary Fund and multinationals, even insinuated Fox was a puppet of the US. "For some, good diplomacy is to engage in pleasantries and bow down to the big ones," he said.

well, mexico and the u.s. do share a border and the u.s. is mexico's biggest trading partner, bar-none... however, fox's support of bush in trade is more than counterbalanced by his tepid to non-existent support in other areas, two prime examples being iraq and cuba (although mexico and cuba have had their own share of problems)... things started to go downhill between fox and bush shortly after their first visit in 2001, after bush basically let mexico fall off of his screen...

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