Showing posts with label BJP. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BJP. Show all posts
Monday, 14 April 2014
BJP : Superstar Rajinikanth JOINS HAND WITH MODI
Thursday, 13 March 2014
BJP MODI: women wing launches campaign
Under this program, the Mahila Morcha will hold meetings at each district level and make contact with the voters for about 18 hours a day till the date of elections.
Mahila Morcha has also organized 'Hum se Miliye, Modi ko Janiye' program with several voluntary organizations on Holi, March 17. Women from minority community shall also participate in large numbers in this program.
All the workers of Morcha's, including Mahila Morcha have started intensive public contact program on the directions of BJP Delhi Pradesh President Dr Harsh Vardhan.
Sunday, 23 February 2014
KEJRIWAL AAP’s office in Mumbai attacked
Party suspects NCP hand
Twenty-three Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) members were arrested by the Mumbai police for allegedly vandalising the office of the Aam Aadmi Party on Saturday.
According to the police, NCP workers started sloganeering outside the AAP’s head office at Chakala in Andheri, a western suburb of Mumbai. The party workers broke window panes, burnt effigies and smeared ink on the door.
“The workers were arrested on charges of rioting and vandalising private property. The exact motive behind the attack is to be ascertained,” Additional Commissioner of Police Milind Bharambe told The Hindu.
Separately, NCP spokesperson Nawab Malik said Mumbai north-west district president, P. Maske, who allegedly led the attack on the AAP office, had been was expelled from the party.
The attack comes just days after the party launched its election campaign in Maharashtra. On Wednesday, top AAP leaders had attacked NCP leaders alleging that they were corrupt.
The AAP leaders also alleged on Thursday that due to corruption, mismanagement and inefficiency in the state power department Maharashtra had incurred losses to the tune of Rs. 22,000 crore.
In a related development, AAP leader Mayank Gandhi and a few party workers were detained by the police while they were en route to protest outside the NCP office in western suburban Mumbai.
Saturday, 22 February 2014
BJP to announce first list of candidates on Feb 27
NEW DELHI, FEB 22:
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will announce its first list of candidates on February 27. The list is expected to declare the candidature of all its top leaders including Narendra Modi, L. K. Advani, Sushma Swaraj, Rajnath Singh, Arun Jaitley and Murli Manohar Joshi.
While she confirmed that the list will be out on February 27, leader of the Opposition Sushma Swaraj refused to divulge any further details. Although she is almost certain to be projected again from Vidisha, Madhya Pradesh, from where she had won in 2009, Swaraj said she will follow the party’s diktat on the matter.
“I am a loyal soldier of the party. I’ve gone everywhere, from Delhi (where she contested the Assembly elections) to Bellary. If the party now tells me to fight from Telangana, I will go there,” she said.
The reference to Telangana was significant as Swaraj had played a crucial part in the passage of the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Bill in the Lok Sabha on February 18. From the floor of the House, she had reminded the people of Telangana: “Don’t forget your Chinnamma (little mother) and not just Sonia Amma.”
Sitting across the table from party President Rajnath Singh, who had contested from Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, Swaraj said she is not fixated on any seat. “If Rajnathji wants to contest from Vidisha, I will invite him there. Mera kya hai, mein to Telangana chali jaoongi (my candidature doesn’t matter so much. I could even go to Telangana.),” she said.
It is not certain where Modi and Arun Jaitley, a Rajya Sabha MP from Gujarat, will contest from. They could both contest from Gujarat or in Jaitley’s case, New Delhi and Amritsar too are frequently mentioned constituencies. The biggest surprise would be Modi about whom there is discussion in the party about the possibility of a contest from Uttar Pradesh. Two seats from the Hindi heartland and politically critical States are discussed in Modi’s context — Varanasi, from where Murli Manohar Joshi is the sitting MP, and Allahabad.
A top source told Business Line that Modi could even contest from two seats simultaneously — one from Gujarat and another from Uttar Pradesh.
If there was any doubt about the veteran L. K. Advani contesting again, he dispelled it himself. Arriving unexpectedly at the party headquarters at 11 Ashoka Road this afternoon, Advani said while responding to a question about his election campaign: “Where is the question about starting a campaign? It is already under way.” Advani is the sitting MP from Gandhinagar.
He said the BJP is in a very good position to emerge as the single largest party in the 16th Lok Sabha. “The Congress’ corruption and mis-governance has ensured that they are at their weakest and the BJP is the strongest it ever was,” Advani said.
Friday, 21 February 2014
Rahul Dravid feels it is time for Zaheer Khan to start GAME
Former captain Rahul Dravid feels it is time for Zaheer Khan to start deliberating on his future as it would be difficult for the senior pacer to survive the rigours of five Test matches when India tour England later this year.
Zaheer, who made a comeback to the Test team during the disastrous tours of South Africa and New Zealand after a long injury lay-off, failed to trouble the batsmen.
Although he bowled 51 overs and took a five-wicket haul in the second innings of the Wellington Test against New Zealand recently, he looked far from impressive.
“Can he survive five Test matches in England? I am not so sure,” Dravid was quoted as saying by‘ESPNcricinfo’
“I think it is a question he deeply needs to ask himself. He doesn’t want to end up being someone who struggles his way through to the end. It can be really hard. And we have seen, he struggled to back up time and time again in these two series. So that’s an issue he needs to consider, Indian selectors need to consider,” he said.
With 311 wickets in 92 Tests, Zaheer is the second most successful India seamer after Kapil Dev but his career has been plagued by injuries.
Dravid said he would hate to see Zaheer end his career on a low.
“He has been a great bowler for India, arguably the finest India fast bowler since Kapil Dev. I would hate to see Zaheer Khan end his career bowling 120-125 kph and limp away from international cricket.
“He has done a great job to get himself fit for these two series and to be fair, he has bowled well in patches, he has bowled consistently,” said Dravid.
Talking about Indian spinners, Dravid said in the past also they had struggled in overseas conditions and people need to be patient with them.
“We will need to show some patience with our spinners, whether it is R Ashwin or whether it’s (Ravindra) Jadeja, it’s early days for both in international cricket,” he said.
“We have seen some greats of Indian cricket, including Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh, take a long time to get used to bowling with a Kookaburra ball in overseas conditions.
“I thought we were a little bit impatient with Ashwin. We haven’t given him as much a run as I would like, so I think there is an opportunity for him to get back into the side and play a few more games. He will only learn if he play more games,” insisted Dravid.
THE GAME : Dhoni is a defensive captain - Mohinder Amarnath
"A captain has to lead from the front. Not a single Test captain in the world bats at number seven" says the former India cricketer
Former India cricketer Mohinder Amarnath says the time has come to remove Mahendra Singh Dhoni from captaincy as his “defensive approach” has resulted in the country’s prolonged failure on foreign soil.
“Dhoni is a defensive captain who allows opposition to make a comeback in the game. His record is good at home pitches only like any other Indian captain. There is nothing special about it. We need aggressive captains like Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi to win matches abroad,” Amarnath said.
India had lost successive overseas Test rubbers in England (0-4) in 2011 and Australia (0-4) in 2011-12 and more recently in South Africa (0-1) and New Zealand (0-1).
India’s last overseas Test win came against the West Indies at Kingston in June 2011. Dhoni’s dismal away record stands at five wins out of 23 Tests, while losing 11 games.
“A captain has to lead from the front. Not a single Test captain in the world bats at number seven. What kind of example you are going to set. I sincerely feel that this is high time to relieve him from Test captaincy and although he is a match winner in ODIs, they should look at an option in shorter format as well,” said the hero of India’s 1983 World Cup triumph.
Asked about his choice for future captain, he said Virat Kohli looked good to shoulder the responsibility.
“Gautam (Gambhir) was an option who had the experience but since he is out of contention now, Virat is an obvious choice. He has shown leadership qualities at various levels. I think there should be different captains for different formats,” the 63-year-old said.
Amarnath also lashed out at India coach Duncan Fletcher whose appointment, he thinks, hasn’t yielded desired results.
“I don’t understand what is the use of having him (Fletcher) if he is not delivering. Everyone is talking about the players, captain but nobody is raising questions on coach and support staff. I think Indian team needs an Indian coach.
“A coach’s job is to help players to play to their potential and in the past we have achieved laurels with our own coaches,” the former selector said.
MSD N Team India returns home
The Indian cricket team led by M.S. Dhoni returned from New Zealand after losing both One-Day International and Test series, in what turned out to be a disastrous tour.
Soon after landing here on Wednesday night, all the team members took connecting flights to their respective cities.
India lost the five-match ODI series 0-4, followed by two-Test rubber 0-1 against a lowly-ranked New Zealand.
The Indian cricketers now have a short break prior to leaving for Bangladesh on February 23 to compete in the Asia Cup.
The Asia Cup commences on February 25 and India will begin its campaign against the host on February 26 at Fatullah.
Asia Cup will be followed by ICC Twenty20 World Cup, starting on March 16 in Mirpur.
indian skipper Dhoni ruled out of Asia Cup 2014
The skipper sustained an injury during the course of the second Test against New Zealand.
M.S. Dhoni has been ruled out of the Asia Cup in Bangladesh with a side strain. Virat Kohli will lead India in his absence while Dinesh Karthik will don the wicket-keeper’s gloves.
According to a BCCI release, Dhoni suffered a grade-one strain to his left side during the second Test against New Zealand in Wellington and will undergo rehabilitation for 10 days.
In the team selected on February 11, Suresh Raina and Ishant Sharma were omitted even as Cheteshwar Pujara earned a recall.
India opens its Asia Cup campaign against Bangladesh in Fatullah on February 26.
The team: Virat Kohli (c), Varun Aaron, Ravichandran Ashwin, Stuart Binny, Shikhar Dhawan, Ravindra Jadeja, Dinesh Karthik (wk), Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Amit Mishra, Mohammed Shami, Ishwar Pandey, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, Ambati Rayudu, Rohit Sharma.
fool-proof security to IPL: Shinde
The government on Friday said it will not be able to provide fool-proof security to Indian Premier League matches due to the coming Lok Sabha polls.
“Due to general elections, it will be difficult to provide adequate security to IPL matches,” Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde told reporters in New Delhi.
Sources said the Home Ministry has conveyed to BCCI that it would be able to provide adequate security personnel only after the general elections which are expected to be over by mid-May.
IPL matches are likely to be held between April 9 and June 3.
More than 1.20 lakh Central paramilitary force personnel, in addition to State police forces, are expected to be deployed for the multi-phased Lok Sabha polls which are likely to be held in April-May.
The sources said that the Home Ministry has started preparing for the massive exercise of mobilising 1.2 lakh personnel from different paramilitary forces to be deployed for poll duties.
Paramilitary forces are also deployed in Naxal-affected States, Jammu and Kashmir and the north eastern States
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Nalini-Murugan’s daughter appeals to Rahul
“I do know what exactly it feels like missing your loved ones. I [have] been going through the same pain without both my parents. I believe my parents are innocent — they have suffered 23 years”
“I would like to thank Sonia Gandhi for reducing my mom’s sentence and Priyanka Gandhi for forgiving her. I feel terrible for her father’s loss,” said Harithra, the 22-year-old daughter of Nalini and Murugan who are serving a sentence for the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. She wrote this in a gmail chat with The Hindu on Thursday night from the university accommodation she shares.
“I do know what exactly it feels like missing your loved ones. I [have] been going through the same pain without both my parents. I believe my parents are innocent — they have suffered 23 years. Not just them, but me too, [despite] not having done anything wrong! I kindly request Rahul Gandhi to please forgive my parents and let them be free — for my sake.”
Ms. Harithra, who did not wish to disclose the city in the United Kingdom where she is studying nor the name of the University where she is currently pursuing a degree, told The Hindu that she was “very upset to read the news this morning of a [court] stay against my parents release”.
“It was awful. I was excited that they were finally gonna (sic) be with me. Today, it has just gone away,” Ms. Harithra said.
She wanted to give her parents the message that she loved them very much. “Please be strong and take care. I will always be waiting for you,” she said.
Ms. Harithra came to the U.K. in 2006. She did her schooling in Scotland and moved to England for her university. She has not seen her parents since then, but writes to them every month and receives letters from them every two weeks.
If she had three wishes what would they be? In response, Ms. Harithra wrote: “1. Have my parents back and live with them. 2. I wish Rajiv Gandhi had not been murdered and [had] lived happily with his family too 3. I wish nobody dies in assassinations! We live in peace and harmony.”
Ms. Haritra wants to do a Ph.D. in medical physics, and not in medicine. “I can’t stand blood,” she said.
“TBH (to be honest), I don’t understand politics,” Ms. Harithra said. She added: “Thanks each and everybody who supported reducing my parents hanging to live sentence! It meant the world to me having them alive.” She also requested support for their release. “I have been suffering without them for the past 22 years,” she said.
Thursday, 20 February 2014
BJP EXCLUSIVE CAMPAIGN RALLY IN TAMIL NADU N OTHER STATES
The BJP’s strategy to raise its vote share in Tamil Nadu to 16 per cent by enlisting the support of smaller regional parties and caste-based groups was apparent at Narendra Modi’s recent rally in Vandalur. Yet, despite the apparent support, Modi’s ability to connect to India’s multi-cultural and linguistic population remains unclear.
Having elbowed my way into a packed suburban train to reach Vandalur in Chennai’s southern outskirts — where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) organised a huge rally on February 8 — one sensed it was much more than the saffron party cashing in on pre-election fever.
Despite it being an off-peak hour on a Satruday, most compartments were breathlessly crowded. Scores of young men with BJP flags and pamphlets on hand, overseen by their local netas, pushed their way into to the train’s coaches, raising patriotic slogans like Bharat Maata Ki Jai. Many other passengers jostled for space amid this babel of voices. The students were visibly excited about travelling to catch a glimpse of, and listen to, Narendra Modi, the BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate.
The students, who were in their early 20s or even less, mainly drawn from Chennai’s more politically proactive colleges, including Pachaiyappa’s College, Presidency College, and the Government Arts College, will be first-time voters in the 2014 General Election to the Lok Sabha. History must be amused at its own past. For, students from these institutions once nurtured the anti-Hindi agitation led by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) in the mid-1960s. The success of that agitation became a game-changer in the State’s politics, having a long term bearish impact on the prospects of the national parties. And today, the saffron party appeared to appeal to the present generation of students, from these very institutions.
Curiously, a Campco chocolate bar was the conversation piece during that one hour train journey, to gauge the feelings of those students taken in by Mr. Modi’s charisma. It unwittingly came in handy not only as an instant ionizer to improve the air quality in the compartment, but also as a lesson in sharing small things.
My memory took me back to Campco (Central Arecanut and Cocoa Marketing and Processing Cooperative), a success story of a cooperative that flowered in the early 1970s. This was a unique initiative to save the crisis-hit arecanut farmers in Mangalore area of South Karnataka and the adjoining belt of North Kerala.
I quickly realised that the chocolate bar could establish bonhomie with the travelling youth. I passed on a couple of the Campco pieces to the half-famished looking students and our conversation got easier. Campco reminded me of the Anand pattern of dairy development in Gujarat, thanks to the visionary zeal of the late Varghese Kurien, decades before the BJP or Mr. Modi came on to the political scene there. Other States later went on to emulate the Anand model, I told the students. But such things seemed to hardly interest today’s youth rushing to see the ‘new iron man’ from Gujarat, as one of them put it, with the rally organisers projecting Mr. Modi as being on par with Sardar Patel and Swami Vivekananda. Huge cut-outs of the trio at the venue of the rally at Vandalur said it all.
“A family friend near my house, a Modi supporter, asked us to come along today and that’s why we are going,” said one of the boys in the group who is in his second year, studying B.Sc. (Maths) in Pachaiyappa’s College. Interestingly, his father is a “staunch Congress supporter”, he confided. “But then, why Modi,” I asked. “He will do good things,” pat came the student’s reply. Beyond that the youngsters seemed to be indifferent to other issues.
That was a partial, yet fairly strong indication of the mood of the young voters today, as the saffron brigade makes a concerted effort to break into the nationalist-minded constituency in Tamil Nadu, which had traditionally voted the Congress and its regional allies in a Lok Sabha election. The exceptions were the two successive elections in 1998 and 1999 when former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee led the BJP-headed National Democratic Alliance, when the BJP made a small dent. But the Tamil youths are still hazy, more seeming to go by a bandwagon effect as shown by a large presence of students at the Modi rally.
Looking for allies
“An estimated over one lakh people have thronged the venue from the southern districts alone, Kanniyakumari in particular, and are waiting to hear Narendra Modi since morning,” claimed Sankar, a party volunteer from Villupuram. Bus-loads of volunteers from the State’s western districts — where the backward caste Gounders are the dominant community — lend weight to claims by sources in the State Intelligence and the party that the BJP, even before firming up its poll allies in the State, are eyeing nine of the 40 Lok Sabha Seats (39 in Tamil Nadu and the lone constituency in Puducherry). Four of these constituencies are in the Coimbatore-Salem-Erode-Karur-Namakkal belt where the Goundars have a sizeable presence. One faction of the Kongu region caste grouping, the Kongu Naadu Makkal Desiya Katchi led by Easwaran, has already tied up with the BJP.
Clearly, as both the main Dravidian parties, the DMK and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), shunned any pre-poll pact with the BJP, the saffron party has begun to stitch together an alliance with the major OBC groups across the State, including the Nadars and Thevars, and more locale-specific groups like the Sourashtra community, predominantly weavers, in Madurai. Together with the support of some of the smaller regional parties like the Vaiko-led Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK), BJP campaign managers claimed, “we have already raised our vote-share in Tamil Nadu from just 3 per cent to 16 per cent.”
In fact, senior BJP leader from the State, Ela. Ganesan, addressing the rally, said that though the party’s initial plan to make the Vandalur rally a joint launch campaign did not fructify they have ‘almost completed’ the alliance formation. The Indiya Jananayaka Katchi (IJK), whose leader, Pari Vendar, is also the moving spirit behind the private SRM University near Chennai, and who seeks to rope in professionals, scientists, achievers in various fields and students to politics, vowed to play a fair friend of the BJP.
The OBC-Vanniyars dominated Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) led by S. Ramadoss — a factor to reckon with numerically in north and north-west Tamil Nadu — is also expected to join the BJP-led alliance in the State. The 16 per cent vote-share that the BJP’s campaign managers are now touting includes the individual vote-shares of all these smaller parties and caste-based outfits.
A few BJP functionaries from the western districts, requesting anonymity, conceded, “Sure, the BJP candidates will this time poll more votes in Tamil Nadu due to the Modi factor, but that is not enough. The major vote-banks are with the two main Dravidian parties, the DMK and AIADMK; and this is our problem now as to win seats we need a proper alliance.”
Going by Mr. Ganesan’s remark at the rally, the BJP by now seems to have given up its efforts to woo the actor-turned-politician Vijayakant-led Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam (DMDK), which pulled off an impressive anti-corruption rally near Villupuram recently but has not announced any decision on the alliance issue.
The DMDK often says that it has about 10 per cent vote-share in the State now, but any party could find the DMDK leader’s style of functioning annoyingly tiresome. “Vijayakant keeps his potential allies in a tantalizing wait till the last minute and may even go it alone,” says the veteran politician Panruti S. Ramachandran, who recently quit the DMDK “for good”. He now plans to campaign for the Jayalalithaa-led AIADMK, which has just inked a poll alliance with the two main Left parties, the Communist Party of India and the Communist Party of India (Marxist). [At the time of writing, the DMDK and the Congress are exploring the possibility of an alliance that could later get bigger with the DMK.]
However, showcasing its new alliance arithmetic has been just one facet of the BJP’s poll strategy in Tamil Nadu so far. It is at best to reinforce its big picture of a wider national acceptability that Mr. Modi has seemingly gained in recent months, mainly on the planks of development, fighting corruption and repositioning India as the focus of regional security, politically and economically.
State-specific issues like federalism, repeated attacks on Tamil Nadu fishermen by the Sri Lanka Navy, inter-linking of rivers or the demand to reintroduce prohibition in the State — which Mr. Modi has successfully introduced in Gujarat — are dovetailed into this larger architecture, based on a grandiose image of Mr. Modi as an achiever.
At Vandalur, the stage was feverishly set in a regional setting for a ‘clean chit Modi’ — an appellation that has been in currency since the report of the Special Investigation Team probe into the 2002 post-Godhra communal violence cases in Gujarat — by the earlier party speakers who showered glowing encomiums on him to preface his growing acceptability.
From likening Mr. Modi’s political rise as someone from a most backward community to the social justice agenda of the social reformer Periyar, and to the political legend M.G. Ramachandran, who rose from the ranks as the true friend of the poor and the downtrodden — the chai waala not excluded — State BJP leaders including Dr. Tamizhisai Sounderrajan vied with one another with apt metaphors to endear Mr. Modi to the Tamil Nadu voters.
Thus, when Mr. Modi arrived to speak, it was his virulent attack on the Congress-led UPA Government on all fronts including the price rise and the plummeting Indian Rupee that completed the picture. Tactically, he did not even mention the AIADMK or Ms. Jayalalithaa in his 65-minute speech, though he took pot-shots at the Congress and the DMK’s role in the 2G spectrum scam.
Tactical blunder
Nonetheless, for all his masterly generalities, Mr. Modi missed out on two crucial aspects at the rally. First, his jibes at the “Recounting Minister in Delhi from Tamil Nadu” (an apparent reference to the case challenging the election of the Finance Minister, P. Chidambaram, from Sivaganga constituency in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls), for all the economic misery the country faced, met with a prompt rejoinder from Mr. Chidambaram on how Mr. Modi got his basic facts, both on the poll petition and on the economy, wrong.
Even if this were to be brushed aside as Mr. Modi’s rhetorical flourish on Tamil Nadu soil, the second one was a tactical blunder. The BJP’s Prime Ministerial aspirant chose to be politically correct by beginning his speech with some catchy poetic lines in Tamil, but quickly switched over to his robust Hindi in a State where language continues to be an emotive issue even if no longer a defining one.
In fact, the moment Mr. Modi began speaking in Hindi, people started leaving the venue in droves. All the rapport that his supporters had till that point assiduously built with the crowd seemed to melt away in minutes. But an oblivious Gujarat Chief Minister happily continued in that vein until he launched his diatribe against Mr. Chidambaram in English.
Though Mr. Modi could have easily alternated between English and Hindi to keep his audience in good humour, which is what political leaders from the north usually do when they come down south for campaigning, his Vandalur rally eventually ended up as a classic case of missing the wood for the trees.
It was here that his more experienced and sagacious counterpart, M. Venkiah Naidu, former BJP national president, unwittingly scored over Mr. Modi’s rhetoric. An alliteratively witty speaker as always, without losing his political traction, Mr. Naidu made the right noises for the BJP, substantially in English and rounded off his speech in Telugu, an acknowledgement of the fact that Greater Chennai has a substantial Telugu-speaking population.
This is one strand of political accommodation, the spirit of give-and-take, which Mr. Modi may have to learn if he is eyeing the political top job in a vast, multi-linguistic, multi-cultural nation. Perhaps, that is for another rally.
Politically fraught issues- President Barack Obama
Pressed by North American allies on an array of politically fraught issues, President Barack Obama on Wednesday vowed to press ahead with stalled efforts to expand trade agreements for the Americas into Asia and overhaul fractured U.S. immigration laws. But Mr. Obama made no promises to frustrated Canadian leaders about his long-anticipated decision on the Keystone XL pipeline.
Closing a day of talks with the leaders of Mexico and Canada, Mr. Obama said the North American partners must maintain their “competitive advantage” on trade, in part by expanding into the fast-growing Asia-Pacific region. While Mr. Obama acknowledged that “elements in my party” oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal, he disputed the notion that Democratic concerns would derail the agreement.
“We’ll get this passed if it’s a good agreement,” Mr. Obama declared during a joint news conference with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
The North America Leaders’ Summit often referred to as the “Three Amigos” meeting coincided with the 20th year of the North American Free Trade Agreement among the three countries, a deal that has vastly expanded cross-border commerce in the region but which remains a contentious issue in the United States over its impact on jobs and on environmental protections.
Trade experts say the agreement is due for an upgrade to take into account the current globalized environment and to address issues not touched in the original pact. But rather than reopen NAFTA, the three countries are instead relying on negotiations underway to complete the TPP, which is a trade bloc of 12 countries in the Americas, Asia and the Pacific.
Pena Nieto heralded the “innovative spirit” that spurred NAFTA and said new trade agreements “are bound to go beyond and enhance all together the progress that each one of our countries has made.” And Harper made clear that he was “focused on bringing those negotiations to a successful conclusion.”
Despite the widespread agreement on trade, there were some sources of tension between the North American partners on immigration and the Keystone XL pipeline, both sensitive political issues in the United States.
In Mexico, government officials and the public alike are eager for progress in overhauling U.S. immigration laws. The prospects for sweeping legislation this year has dimmed in recent weeks, with many House Republicans unwilling to tackle the issue in a midterm election year.
Still, Mr. Obama declared, “Immigration reform remains one of my highest priorities.”
For Canada, a key source of frustration with the U.S. has been the Obama administration’s long and drawn out review of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry oil from tar sands in western Canada 1,179 miles to Nebraska, where existing pipelines would then carry the crude to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast. Canada has been pushing the U.S. for years to approve the pipeline, but environmental groups oppose it, and Mr. Obama has said he won’t approve it if it increases greenhouse gas emissions.
A Nebraska judge on Wednesday struck down a law that allowed the pipeline to proceed through the state, a victory for opponents who have tried to block the project.
While Mr. Obama acknowledged that the U.S. review has been “extensive,” he defended the process, saying “these are how we make these decisions about something that could potentially have significant impact on America’s national economy and our national interests.”
A final decision on Keystone isn’t expected until this summer, at the earliest, meaning the verdict could potentially come in the run-up to November’s midterm elections, in which energy issues are likely to be a factor in some key races.
“My views in favour of the project are very well known,” Mr. Harper said.
Events elsewhere in the world competed for the leaders’ attention, most notably the violence that erupted in Ukraine as the government of President Viktor Yanukovych cracked down on protesters. Mr. Obama warned that there would be consequences if the clashes continued. Mr. Obama cautiously noted reports of a truce between the president and the protesters, saying it “could provide space for the sides to resolve their disagreements peacefully.”
Mr. Obama spent just about nine hours in Toluca, the Mexican leader’s hometown, with Air Force One touching down Wednesday afternoon and returning to Washington shortly after the evening news conference.
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