OTTAWA, Jan 27 (AFP) - Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin said Thursday that US President George W. Bush and Mexico's President Vicente Fox had agreed to join him in a summit to tinker with the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Martin has pressed Bush especially to act to strengthen NAFTA's dispute settlement mechanism, irked by the US response to rulings on issues such as Canada's softwood lumber exports to the United States.
"There are gaps in NAFTA and they have got to be fixed and these apply to the Mexicans as much as they will apply to us," Martin told reporters at a policy retreat of his Liberal Party in the eastern province of New Brunswick.
Martin said he brought up the idea of a three-way meeting dubbed by wags as a "three amigos" summit, in talks in Canada with Bush late last year.
"I think the three of us have got to get together, I called Vicente Fox after that meeting, he agreed, as did the President, as did President Bush," Martin said.
He added that officials from all three countries were in the process of fixing a date for the talks, and he had reminded Bush when they spoke by telephone several weeks ago that "we should be getting together."
Canada has been angered by US footdragging over a 20-year dispute on its softwood lumber exports to the United States, which producers there say threaten their industry.
The US International Trade Commission (ITC) grudgingly complied in September with a NAFTA trade ruling and issued a statement saying that the US lumber industry is not threatened by Canadian softwood imports.
That followed several rulings in Canada's favour by the NAFTA panel, and continuing resistance by the US officials to comply with the rulings.
Canada has also been angered by slow progress to reopen the US border to most of its beef exports, stopped over a mad cow disease scare.
NAFTA implementation started on January 1, 1994, and was designed to remove most trade and investment barriers between the United States, Canada and Mexico.
Supporters say the agreement has been a massive boon for all three partners in terms of investment and trade.
NAFTA's critics however, especially those in the United States, charge that the agreement has bled the US economy of hundreds of thousands of jobs and increased the trade deficit.

01/27/2005 18:01 GMT - AFP