A restive Latin America often defies the US

"The US has one clear priority, the battle against terrorism, and in that context only Mexico among the Latin American countries has any real relevance because of its proximity and the border," says Jorge Chabat, an expert in US-Mexico relations in Mexico City. "Distant Argentina just isn't as much of a concern."

The White House rejects the widely held notion that Latin America fell off the US radar. At a briefing Friday on the president's trip to Mexico, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told reporters, "The president came in saying that he was going to put an emphasis on

the neighborhood" and he has pursued "an agenda that has done exactly that."

Pointing to free-trade accords with Chile and four Central American countries, trade-promotion authority that will allow the president to more freely pursue other pacts, and new development and AIDS assistance, Dr. Rice says, "This president has a broad, deep, and intensive engagement with Latin America, and a lot has gotten done."

Others point to a long list of policy missteps by the administration - including a failure to support an economically free-falling Argentina early on, ambiguous statements that appeared to support an ill-fated military coup against Venezuela's democratically elected president, and a failure to come to the aid of a pro-US president of Bolivia who was eventually forced out - as evidence that Latin America has become little more than an afterthought.

A key indicator of relations with the region will be Bush's meeting Monday with Mexican President Vicente Fox.

Rice says the two leaders are "well past" the tensions that followed 9/11 and Mexico's "no" in the UN on Iraq. Bush is eager to tout his latest plan for legalizing undocumented workers - millions of whom are Mexicans.

As part of his quest to woo Hispanic voters, he's anxious to demonstrate that the pre-9/11 good times in US-Mexico relations have returned.

In that sense the relations may be returning to the reality that geographical proximity imposes. The return of Mexico to White House concerns "is a reminder that this is a marriage without recourse to divorce," says Mr. Chabat.

But the same cannot be said for relations with the rest of Latin America.

That is one reason Chabat says the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) - first envisioned in 1994 for completion in 2005 - is now likely to be concluded in a "lite" form at best or with some countries opting out.

"The US does not appear ready to make the kinds of tough decisions, for example in agriculture, that will be needed to move the FTAA ahead," says Pastor.

Noting that the US is moving forward with less-ambitious bilateral accords while the regional pact is sorted out, he adds, "We'll be left with a kind of minilateral system with the US as the hub and small countries at the end of the spokes - and with a region that is more fragmented than united."

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