Note to President Fox: Let him quit

Mexico’s Marxist Foreign Minister, Jorge Castaeda, says he’s not getting his way, so he wants to quit. President Vicente Fox hints he might not let him leave, and says he will announce a decision on Monday.

For the sake of US-Mexican relations, Fox should let Castaeda leave. Immediately.

Most press reports have inaccurately characterized Castaeda as having worked for closer Mexican-American relations. That simply isn’t so. Castaeda’s demands have generally been one-sided, ranging from immigration to the channeling of billions of US Social Security tax dollars into Mexico.

On hemispheric security issues, Castaeda has been a threat. In his own words, he has dedicated his professional life to “trying to help the Latin American left settle scores and accounts with the past.”

Just days before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Castaeda was working aggressively behind the scenes to scrap the half-century-old Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, better known as the Rio Treaty, which unites the entire hemisphere except Castro’s Cuba in an alliance against outside aggressors.

Castaeda’s efforts backfired when Brazil invoked the treaty in a unanimous hemispheric solidarity with the United States.

Yet Mexico was one of the last countries in the world officially to offer condolences or solidarity with America after the terrorist attacks.

After waiting a decent interval, Castaeda went at it again, threatening to wreck the Rio Treaty by withdrawing Mexico and, he hopes, inducing the new or incoming leftist regimes in Venezuela, Brazil and Ecuador to follow.

For the sake of inter-American security and solidarity, to say nothing of Mexican-American relations, President Fox should let his anachronistic foreign minister take his ball and go home.