|
|
|
 News Around the Republic of Mexico | June 2008 
US Includes Rights Language in Mexico Anti-Drug Aid
 Mark Lacey - International Herald Tribune
go to original
| | Drug crackdown: President Felipe Calderón and President Bush. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP) | | |
Mexico City - With a deadly drug war spreading around the country, beleaguered Mexican officials are welcoming $400 million in anti-narcotics assistance in a bill that was given final congressional approval in Washington.
Mexico had objected to inclusion of human rights language in the bill. Congressional leaders toned down the language in the final version but did not eliminate it. The language, activists said Friday, is important in focusing Mexico's attention on abuses by the security forces.
"The big victory is for the rule of law," said José Miguel Vivanco, executive director of the Americas division of Human Rights Watch. "This will push the security forces in Mexico to a higher level of professionalism."
The bill still calls on Mexico's armed forces to cooperate with civilian prosecutors when soldiers are accused of committing abuses, and it still requires the State Department to report to Congress on the Mexican government's collaboration with civilian groups who have been strongly critical of the security forces in the past.
The White House said that President George W. Bush would sign the bill, despite inclusion of the language, and even though lawmakers had trimmed $100 million from it by the time they approved the bill Thursday. The aid package will send helicopters, drug-sniffing dogs and technical help to Mexico.
Bush had negotiated the deal with President Felipe Calderón of Mexico without the input of legislators in the two countries. The U.S. Congress, controlled by Democrats, then redrafted the package, shifting more funds from Mexico to Central America, which is also under siege from traffickers, and insisting that Mexico meet certain human rights conditions to get access to all the money.
Mexican officials reacted angrily to the changes, calling them unacceptable. They hinted that they might turn down the assistance, which experts say would boost the country's anti-narcotics budget by about 20 percent annually, unless the conditions were removed.
"The terms that were approved are respectful of the sovereignty and jurisdiction of both countries," Interior Minister Juan Camilo Mouriño said, an about-face from his criticism of an earlier draft of the legislation.
That Mexico could use the assistance is not in dispute; the country has seen its police commanders singled out for assassination and its municipalities taken over by drug traffickers. But no one expects the aid to be the tipping point in what is proving to be a long-term war.
Calderón has unleashed tens of thousands of soldiers throughout the countryside to combat narcotics traffickers and to end the cozy relationships they have developed with the local authorities over the decades.
Six police officers were killed in Sinaloa State on Thursday night, the authorities said. Earlier this week, the federal police and the army raided a baptism party in Tijuana and rounded up 61 people suspected of having links to drug trafficking, including three local police officers and one state police officer.
"My impression is that the goal of the war is not to eliminate drug trafficking from the face of Mexico - that's impossible," said Jorge Chabat, a specialist in narcotics trafficking and security at CIDE, a Mexican research group. "The Calderón strategy seems to be to fragment the drug cartels and reduce the violence. That goal is at least possible." |
| |
|
Vallarta Weddings
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us