Thread: U.S.: Rice to Mexico for talks on drugs, other issues

U.S.: Rice to Mexico for talks on drugs, other issues

REUTERS

10:42 a.m. October 21, 2008

WASHINGTON – U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice makes her first solo visit to Mexico this week for talks on U.S. help in Mexico's battle against drug gangs as well as other issues, the State Department said Tuesday.

Rice plans to meet Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa and other officials Wednesday and Thursday in the Pacific tourist resort of Puerto Vallarta.

She has traveled to Mexico with President Bush and met Espinosa elsewhere, but this is her first solo trip to the country as secretary of state, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.
With the Bush administration leaving office in January, it is also likely to be her last such trip.

“I'd expect that she will have some extensive conversations about the program (of) cooperation that's represented by the Merida Initiative,â€

Mexico drug crime fight 'unprecedented', threat to US : Rice
4 hours ago

PUERTO VALLARTA, Mexico (AFP) — US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said that Mexico has an up-hill battle in its fight against drug crime, which is also affecting the United States.

"Mexico faces unprecedented difficulties in terms of crime and the links between crime and drugs, and obviously that have -- given our long, shared border -- significant implications for the United States as well," Rice said to journalists on the way to Mexico, where she arrived late Wednesday for talks with her Mexican counterpart.

High on the agenda between Rice and Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa is the Merida Initiative, a 400-million-dollar US anti-drug crime aid package signed into law in June by President George W. Bush.

Mexican officials, including President Felipe Calderon, have called for the rapid release of resources contained in the package -- mostly helicopters and surveillance airplanes.

"The money will start to flow because this is a national security priority for Mexico and it's a national security priority for the United States," Rice said. "We consider it to be an initiative for which there is urgency."

Almost 4,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence since Calderon took office some two years ago, despite a government crackdown involving the deployment of 36,000 troops across the country.

The violence includes gruesome beheadings, kidnappings and massacres, particularly in northern areas bordering the United States.

Rice underlined Wednesday that US officials were still working with Mexico to finalize documents on the delivery of the technical assistance.

"I think it (the aid release) will be sooner than weeks," added Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Tom Shannon, traveling with Rice.

High security measures were in place for the two-day talks in the tourist resort of Puerto Vallarta, including the deployment of 60 police officers, following an October 11 attack on the US consulate in Monterrey, south of the Texas border. A second incident where shots were fired nearby led to a brief closure of the consulate.

The talks would cover a broad range of issues including Mexico's UN security council role, development, trade as well as law enforcement, Rice said.

A Mexican proposal to decriminalize possession of small amounts of drugs and another to legalize marijuana were also expected to be discussed, as Mexican officials consider alternative methods for stemming drug crime.

More than 1,000 have died in suspected drug-linked violence in northern border areas this year, including the volatile cities of Tijuana, across from San Diego, and Ciudad Juarez, further east, across from El Paso in the United States.

US drug chief John Walters said last week in Mexico City that drug-related violence was spilling across the Mexican border into the United States.

Rice had a private dinner with Espinosa and other officials late Wednesday before further talks and a news conference on Thursday.

http://afp.google.com

US: Mexico should soon have anti-drug aid
By NESTOR IKEDA – 1 day ago

PUERTO VALLARTA, Mexico (AP) — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday that Mexico should soon have a $400 million U.S. aid package to help fight drug cartels.

The three-year Merida Initiative has been stalled as the Bush administration verifies to Congress that Mexico is meeting basic human rights and other international standards.

But Rice told Mexican Foreign Secretary Patricia Espinosa that the verification process should be resolved soon.

"This initiative takes our efforts to a new level," she said. "I assured Patricia ... that the United States considers this important initiative and its implementation an urgent task."

However, it was unclear when the money would be released. Presidential elections in November will choose Bush's replacement, and he will leave office in January.

The Mexican government has urged the U.S. to release the money approved by Congress in June. It says it needs to buy planes and provide training to police and soldiers fighting a violent, national campaign against the world's most powerful drug cartels.

President Felipe Calderon has sent more than 20,000 soldiers and federal police across Mexico to take back territory controlled by drug gangs. Cartels caught in nationwide turf battles have responded with unprecedented violence, beheading their enemies and targeting security officials.

Rice and Espinosa also signed an agreement to cooperate during natural disasters.

Espinosa applauded the meeting as proof of the countries' close ties and said the Merida Initiative was a "sign of the maturity in our cooperation on security issues."

http://ap.google.com

Cops ask for better weapons, more help

Violence continues unabated in Baja

By Sandra Dibble
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

October 25, 2008

ROSARITO BEACH – A day after eight people were shot to death in Rosarito Beach, dozens of municipal police officers yesterday demanded better weapons and reinforcements from other agencies, saying they felt powerless against criminal groups operating in their city of 120,000 residents.

In Tijuana, the violence continued as gunmen ambushed a man, woman and child inside a vehicle on a busy highway shortly after 2 p.m. The man and woman died, and the 18-month-old girl was severely injured, the Baja California Attorney General's Office said. A 20-month-old boy was killed in a traffic accident Wednesday when his panicked father crashed after being caught in a shootout.
In Rosarito Beach, a convoy of Mexican marines and a group of heavily armed federal police could be seen driving through downtown yesterday afternoon. Mayor Hugo Torres said he had been promised help from the military and state police to help gain control over crime in the city.

But from police headquarters to local schools, the fear was palpable following Thursday's three shooting incidents in less than five hours.

The victims included a 15-year-old student, one of four killed in an attack on a veterinary supply store on Bulevar Benito Juarez, the city's main avenue. Earlier, two municipal police officers were shot to death, bringing to seven the number of officers killed in the past month.

Rumors of further attacks caused some students to stay away from school, with unusually high absentee rates at two dozen of the city's schools, said Oscar Vega, Baja California's education secretary.

“We're living through a difficult period, as citizens, and we must pay attention,â€

Police investigator, 3 others die in border violence

By Omar Millan Gonzalez

9:14 p.m. October 25, 2008

TIJUANA – A state police investigator was among the four people shot to death Saturday, authorities said.
Agent Isidro Huerta Diaz was driving his official pickup at kilometer 152 on the free road to Tecate when he was attacked about 4:40 p.m. by men traveling in a vehicle, the state Attorney General's Office said. The agent was assigned to the agency's Tecate office.

About 200 yards away, on the same road, police found a another man shot to death in his pickup, apparently by the same gunmen, the agency said. He was identified as Jaime Francisco Rodelo Lara, 37.
In addition, four bystanders who were on the road at the time of that attack, including a bus passenger, were wounded and taken to hospitals, the agency said.

Saturday morning, authorities found the bodies of two men in a field on Amaranto Street in the Hacienda Las Flores development, in the city's east side. Investigators believe the men were between 18 and 25 years old, and that they were killed at the site.

About 6 p.m. Saturday, federal agents traded gunfire with the occupants of a three-story house in the Lomas de Pedregal neighborhood, municipal police said. About two hours later, the agents left and several military convoys arrived.

No information on the incident was available from Mexico's Attorney General's Office, which comments on federal operations.

The killings Saturday pushed the death toll in one month in Tijuana to 147 in what authorities say is a struggle among rival cartels to control the drug trade in the region.

Omar Millan Gonzalez is a freelance writer based in Tijuana

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexi ... 14-bn25tj2

US: Mexico should soon have anti-drug aid

By NESTOR IKEDA

PUERTO VALLARTA, Mexico (AP) — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday that Mexico should soon have a $400 million U.S. aid package to help fight drug cartels.

The three-year Merida Initiative has been stalled as the Bush administration verifies to Congress that Mexico is meeting basic human rights and other international standards.

But Rice told Mexican Foreign Secretary Patricia Espinosa that the verification process should be resolved soon.

"This initiative takes our efforts to a new level," she said. "I assured Patricia ... that the United States considers this important initiative and its implementation an urgent task."

However, it was unclear when the money would be released. Presidential elections in November will choose Bush's replacement, and he will leave office in January.

The Mexican government has urged the U.S. to release the money approved by Congress in June. It says it needs to buy planes and provide training to police and soldiers fighting a violent, national campaign against the world's most powerful drug cartels.

President Felipe Calderon has sent more than 20,000 soldiers and federal police across Mexico to take back territory controlled by drug gangs.
Cartels caught in nationwide turf battles have responded with unprecedented violence, beheading their enemies and targeting security officials.

Rice and Espinosa also signed an agreement to cooperate during natural disasters.

Espinosa applauded the meeting as proof of the countries' close ties and said the Merida Initiative was a "sign of the maturity in our cooperation on security issues."

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g9YA ... QD940E4100

Mexico reveals drug corruption network

By E. Eduardo Castillo
ASSOCIATED PRESS

8:05 a.m. October 27, 2008

MEXICO CITY – Mexican prosecutors say that employees of the federal Attorney's General's Office worked for a drug cartel, passing sensitive information to traffickers in the worst known case of drug infiltration of law enforcement in a decade.

Employees of the unit charged with fighting organized crime were paid by members of the Beltran-Leyva cartel to pass along information on federal investigations of their organization and other traffickers.

Two top employees of the organized crime unit and at least three federal police agents assigned to it may have been passing information on surveillance targets and potential raids for at least four years, the unit's head, Assistant Attorney General Marisela Morales, told a news conference.

One of the officials was an assistant intelligence director and the other served as a liaison in requesting searches and assigning officers to carry them out.

All but one of the officials has been arrested.

The agents and officials received payments of between $150,000 and $450,000 per month for the information, Morales said.

The case represents the most serious known infiltration of anti-crime agencies since the 1997 arrest of Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, the head of Mexico's anti-drug agency, who was later convicted of aiding drug lord Amado Carrillo Fuentes, who has since died.

The Beltran Leyva brothers are one of the groups that make up northern Mexico's Sinaloa cartel, the country's largest drug trafficking confederation.

Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora said that investigations were continuing to see whether any other informants had infiltrated prosecutors' offices.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexi ... ption.html

Violence is rising in Mexico's drug war, and the victims include cartel members—and now children.

By Michael Miller | NEWSWEEK
Published Oct 25, 2008
From the magazine issue dated Nov 3, 2008

Mexico is no stranger to violence. But when men dressed in black tossed grenades into crowds celebrating Mexican Independence Day in Morelia in September, it marked a new stage in a national nightmare. A country long accustomed to bloody feuds between powerful drug cartels, Mexico now faces the prospect of an all-out drug war in which innocents are no longer off-limits. The grenade attack in Morelia killed eight and injured 100, raising the death toll from drug violence this year to more than 3,700—a figure more reminiscent of Iraq or Afghanistan than the United States' neighbor.

While the vast majority of those killed are affiliated with the drug cartels, dozens if not hundreds of innocents have been killed in the past year. Among them: a little girl in Ciudad Juarez; six people in front of a recreation center, also in Juarez; a 14-year-old girl in Acapulco; two small children in Tijuana. The violence has become so bad that last week U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice traveled to Puerto Vallarta to meet with her Mexican counterpart, Patricia Espinosa, and told her that tackling drug crime was a "national-security priority" for both countries.

The violence is a reaction to President Felipe Calderón's aggressive moves against the cartels. When he came to power in 2006, he needed "a signature issue that would make him look strong," says Shannon O'Neil, a Mexico expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, and announced he would use federal troops to target narcotraffickers. He argued that the offensive would reduce drug-related violence and weaken the influence of drug cartels. But as the body count climbed upward, Calderon's strategy shifted. The military surge had turned into a war to eradicate the drug trade—something most experts agree is nearly impossible. Bodies have been piling up ever since. In 2006, between 1,500 and 2,000 people were killed; this year the toll is already at 3,725.

The attacks on innocents suggest the cartels are now trying to increase their pressure on Calderón. The message: call off the troops or else. In response, generals in charge of the offensive have said it will last "as long as it has to." Yet it remains unclear how effective a continued offensive will be. The violence shows that the government has been able to disrupt the normal business of the drug cartels, but it has hardly eradicated drugs. And Mexicans are fed up. A recent poll found that only 25 percent feel safer because of the surge, with 50 percent unconvinced the strategy will work by the time Calderón leaves office in 2011. Hundreds of documented cases of human-rights abuses committed by soldiers have not helped the government's case either, drawing into question the wisdom of using federal troops as a police force.

Indeed, without a more comprehensive reform of the criminal-justice system, Calderón's surge will have fleeting effects. The cartels' power to act as conglomerates, controlling entire regions and supplementing the drug trade with kidnapping and human trafficking, relies upon corrupt local police. Calderón has introduced legislation to route out corruption, but the problem is too large to disappear any time soon. Mexico's judicial system is undergoing a much-needed overhaul, but Mexican prisons remain some of the worst in the Western Hemisphere. Worst of all, the president has largely ignored the reasons behind the booming drug trade. NAFTA has not only made smuggling drugs into the United States easier but has allowed cartels to amass arsenals of weapons made north of the border. By favoring large agro-businesses, NAFTA has also made small farming economically unviable, pushing hundreds of thousands of Mexicans to the cities, and often into the drug trade.

Still, Calderón has a chance to turn things around. The cartels are battling each other in an attempt to grab territory, and the terrorism-style tactics they have employed against innocents in the past few months are a sign of desperation. In this sense, the moment could be an opportunity for Calderón. This doesn't mean quitting while he's ahead—or making further, futile attempts to eradicate the drug trade altogether—but beginning the long list of reforms to the criminal-justice system to stop the cartels from regaining their strength after an inevitable drawdown of troops. By doing so, Calderón could manage to decimate the cartels and reduce violence down the road. But that would also mean tacitly shifting to a policy of greater tolerance—a highly risky political move given just how much he has wagered on the surge.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/165780

Six slain in continuing Tijuana drug carnage

By Omar Millan Gonzalez

11:37 p.m. October 27, 2008

TIJUANA – Less than 48 hours after the capture of a key member of the notorious Arellano Felix cartel, the violence associated with drug trafficking continued unabated Monday.
Six men were slain between 3 and 7 p.m. in north and east Tijuana by gunmen from organized crime, authorities said.

The body of a man with several gunshots and a wounded man were found on Avenida Ferrocarril about 3 p.m. in colonia Libertad, adjacent to the border, according to the state Attorney General's Office.
About 5:30 p.m., the agency received word that two men had been fatally shot by gunmen traveling in a vehicle in eastern colonia Mariano Matamoros.

One of the victims was found beside public middle school Number 36 on Luisa Martinez Street, and the other was found nearby, on Fuentes Aranda Street in colonia Villa Floresta, the agency said.

The municipal police department reported that three men were shot to death shortly after 7 p.m. by gunmen who arrived in an SUV. The victims were inside a small market on Bulevar Diaz Ordaz, near the entrance to Lomas Verdes, on the east side, the department said.

None of the victims had been identified last night.

In the last 30 days authorities have recorded nearly 150 people killed by groups of gunmen believed to be working for drug mafias.

Victor Clark, director of the Binational Center for Human Rights, has followed drug trafficking in the region for more than two decades. He said the violence associated with drugs will not stop with the capture of Eduardo Arellano Felix on Saturday night.

On the contrary, he said, it will increase because several cells that have spun off the Arellano cartel still have significant financial power and manpower in the form of squads of gunmen.

He estimated that in all, the cartel could have 800 to 3,000 gunmen at its disposal.

Omar Millan Gonzalez is a freelance writer based in Tijuana.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexi ... jdead.html

The money will start to flow because this is a national security priority for Mexico and it's a national security priority for the United States," Rice said. "We consider it to be an initiative for which there is urgency."

If it's a "national security priority" then why do our borders remain wide open? Where's the "urgency" to close that border and protect the American citizens?

Or would doing so be too offensive to mexico's sensibilities Secretary Rice? Can you please explain?