President Bush took steps toward warmer relations with Mexico and Canada yesterday, announcing a North American pact to broaden cooperation on security and economic issues.

Mr. Bush, the Mexican president, Vicente Fox, and the Canadian prime minister, Paul Martin, said the three countries will work toward joint defense policies, reduced costs of trade, and protection of natural resources.

“It’s important for us to work to make sure our countries are safe and secure, in order that our people can live in peace, as well as our economies can grow,” Mr. Bush said at a press conference following the summit yesterday at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. “We’ve got a lot of trade with each other and we intend to keep it that way. We’ve got a lot of crossing of the border. I intend to make our borders more secure and facilitate legal traffic.”

America, Canada, and Mexico make up the world’s most prosperous trading bloc under the North American Free Trade Agreement. But while Mr. Bush has generally remained amiable with the other leaders, referring to them as his “dos amigos,” relations have chilled since September 11, 2001, due to stalled immigration reform talks, Canadian and Mexican opposition to America’s invasion of Iraq, and Canada’s decision to opt out of America’s missile-defense shield.

“In the past three or four years, there’s been some hurt between Mexico, the U.S., and Canada,” said Stephen Johnson, the senior policy analyst for Latin America at the Heritage Foundation. “This summit is a success because the three leaders met and they discussed areas of mutual interest and ways they can cooperate.”

With new economic powerhouses growing stronger, such as India and China, it is particularly important that the pact improve upon the North American Free Trade Agreement, Mr. Martin said in the joint press conference.

“We represent three sovereign nations that have formed one of the most successful partnerships in the world. That being said, we also recognize that we cannot be complacent,” Mr. Martin said. “This requires a new partnership, stronger, more dynamic, one that is focused on the future. We are determined to forge the next generation of our continent’s success. That is our destination.”

Ministers from each country will form working groups and are instructed to meet within 90 days to discuss how to carry out the ideas generated at the summit.

“The benefits of Nafta are widely known, but now we find new challenges that demand that we take new actions,” Mr. Fox said through a translator.

The announcement was made after the leaders met for more than an hour at the university. Following the press conference, they traveled together by helicopter to Mr. Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, for lunch.

In that more informal setting, the more contentious issues were expected to surface. For Canada, they include anger over border closures to Canadian beef amid lingering concerns over mad cow disease, and American tariffs on softwood lumber. The Mexican government would like action on immigration reform. It is also upset about vigilantes who are massing at the Southwestern border to stop illegal immigrants, and it bristles at accusations that Mexican officials could do more to protect the borders.

While it is not part of the pact, Mr. Bush restated at the press conference his commitment to opening borders with a guest-worker program, saying it is now up to Congress to pass the immigration legislation.

“There’s some million people a day crossing the border from Mexico into the United States, which presents a common issue, and that is how do we make sure those crossing the border are not terrorists or drug runners or gun runners or smugglers,” Mr. Bush said. “There’s a better way to enforce our border. And one way is to be compassionate and decent about the workers who are coming here to the United States.”

In January 2004, the president introduced a broad temporary worker program that would match foreign workers with jobs that Americans will not take. Senator McCain, a Republican from Arizona, is drafting legislation and is expected to introduce a bipartisan bill within the next few months.

Addressing the Mexican president, Mr. Bush said, “You’ve got my pledge, I’ll continue working on it. You don’t have my pledge that Congress will act because I’m not a member of the legislative branch. But you will have my pledge that I will continue to push our Congress to come up with rational, commonsense immigration policy.”