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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | September 2005 
President Fox Lashes Back at U.S.
 Ginger Thompson - NYTimes
| | Mexican President Vicente Fox says both nations share responsibility for border violence. (Photo: Andrew Winning) |
Mexico City - President Vicente Fox responded over the weekend to criticism from U.S. authorities about a recent surge in violence and illegal immigration along the border, saying that the United States shares responsibility for the problems and should work harder with Mexico to correct them.
Fox said he rejected "forcefully" the statements by the Bush administration and governors of border states, contending they had unfairly depicted Mexico as a haven for organized crime, though his government has arrested more drug traffickers and dismantled more cartels than any of its predecessors. He also said Mexican immigrants had been portrayed unfairly as potential terrorists when they had in fact become a pillar of the U.S. economy.
In an interview Saturday, Fox acknowledged that his government had a long way to go to make the border secure. But he said the United States should stop casting blame for problems created by both countries.
He also said the United States should not allow concerns about border security to derail efforts to adopt new measures, two of them before Congress, that would allow millions of additional Mexicans to become guest workers in the United States.
"Security is a shared responsibility," Fox said. Then, referring to the United States, he said, "I don't understand that now they only cast blame and accusations, and they do not collaborate or cooperate so that together we can resolve this problem."
On the changes in immigration policy, he said: "There is will on the part of President Bush, according to what he has expressed publicly, and what he has expressed in conversations with us. So, I trust that in the coming weeks and months, we will succeed finally in arriving at a positive resolution for the benefit of both countries."
More pressing realities, however, may stand in the way. Work on immigration policy was first postponed four years ago, after the Sept. 11 attacks. Then it was put off for Bush's re-election campaign. Now, it may be set aside again as the United States struggles to recover from Hurricane Katrina.
But Fox does not have a lot of time left; he is entering his last year in office.
His comments were aimed at what many here perceive as a troubling shift in U.S. attitudes and diplomatic policy toward Mexico. In recent weeks, U.S. officials have openly berated Mexico for failing to stop a wave of drug-related violence that has cost close to 1,000 lives along the 2,000-mile border.
Neither Fox nor his aides denied that the problems exist. But they said that the responses from the United States did not reflect the complexities of the problems, nor did they acknowledge that Mexico had undertaken unprecedented efforts to address them. |
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