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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | January 2008 
US May Peg Drug Aid to Mexico on Extraditions
 Mark Stevenson - Associated Press
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 |  | Mexico's judiciary not the president, police or prosecutors controls extraditions. |  | | | |
Mexico City The United States wants to tie a $1.5 billion anti-drug aid package in part to Mexico's performance in extraditing suspects, a top State Department official said Wednesday.
The multiyear aid program known as the Merida Initiative, after the Mexican city where President Bush and Mexico's Felipe Calder๓n first discussed the idea has sparked fears south of the border that it could threaten the country's sovereignty.
David T. Johnson, who heads the department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, said the U.S. government would like to measure whether increased technical aid and training for Mexican police result in a greater number of prosecutions on extraditable charges. Mexico's judiciary not the president, police or prosecutors controls extraditions.
In general, (drug) seizures, extraditions are one set of measures, as is the level of (drug) pricing and purity in the United States, Johnson told foreign correspondents in Mexico, where he was meeting with officials to measure performance under the Merida Initiative.
Bush has asked Congress to approve $550 million of the package, but lawmakers have not yet taken action. Johnson said legislators want to include performance evaluation measures in the initiative, but he added that those measures shouldn't be intrusive.
We're not going to a place where we're grading each other's papers, he said.
Johnson also noted that Central America which has become a major trafficking route for U.S.-bound cocaine in recent years but is slated to get less than a tenth of the $550 million could receive a greater share in the future.
The congress ... noted the same thing, Johnson said when asked about the relative paucity aid for Central America. He said he expects the second or third years of the program to have a significantly greater focus on Central America than we had in the initial request.
For decades Mexico which lost half its territory to the United States in an 1847-48 war has accepted almost no U.S. aid, in part because of perceptions that any such help would come with strings attached.
Extradition, too, has historically been a sensitive question in Mexico. Throughout the 1990s, Mexico was loath to extradite its citizens to the United States. The country only began recently to extradite those who face life imprisonment, and still refuses to extradite anyone who could receive the death penalty.
Johnson praised Calder๓n's administration for an aggressive anti-drug effort, in which the president has sent thousands of soldiers and federal police to outlying states to battle the cartels since he took office in December 2006. |
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