Mexico atty general urges U.S. to stem flow of guns
Wed Mar 28, 2007 11:26PM EDT
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's attorney general said on Wednesday the United States should do more to ensure widely available high-powered guns do not find their way into the hands of violent drug gangs in Mexico.

Drug cartels for years have run rampant in many Mexican cities near the border with the United States, their main export market and what police say is also the source of many of their arms.

"It's truly absurd that a person can get together 50 or 100 high-powered weapons, grenade launchers and fragment grenades and can transport these shipments to our country," Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora said at an event in Mexico City.

Owning most kinds of guns is illegal in Mexico, except with hard-to-get permits.

Since Mexican President Felipe Calderon took office in December, he has sent thousands of soldiers to combat drug cartels fighting for control of transit points like the Pacific resort of Acapulco and the U.S.-border city of Tijuana.

Medina Mora, the country's senior prosecutor, said keeping guns from illegally finding their way across the border into Mexico was "a task that requires much more effort from the U.S. government and it's one of the demands we have put on the table, notwithstanding our own responsibility."

Despite Calderon's crackdown, hundreds of murders have been attributed to drug crime so far this year, similar to the same period of last year.


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