| | |  News Around the Republic of Mexico | August 2009 
UN Sets Up Mexico as Host Country for Disarmament Conference
 Tala Dowlatshahi - Talk Radio News
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August 28, 2009
The United Nations is gearing up for an annual Non-Governmental Organization Conference on Disarmament in Mexico. The conference entitled “For Peace and Development: Disarm Now!” is set to take place in Mexico City from September 9-11. At the mention of Mexico, one is not reminded of a peaceful and disarming country, but rather of a brutal drug war, where sophisticated weaponry has killed some 11,000 Mexican people.
In recent weeks, Mexican police are finding themselves completely out of sorts. There are just too many guns taking over the country by drug cartels with military-grade weaponry. The weaponry occupy Mexico’s towns and cities and include grenade launchers, TNT, machine guns, rifles, anti-tank rockets and other heavy arms used to equip a military during a civil war or conflict.
The United States currently supplies some 90 percent of the firearms going over the border. With the support of the Bush administration, the Merida Initiative (also called Plan Mexico), which was established in 2007 and is still in place, provides at least US$1.6 billion in armaments, training and resources to the corrupt Mexican military.
Much of the heavy weaponry is believed to come from Central America–leftover munitions from wars past. And the cartels are robbing the weapons manufacturers and warehouses blind of industrial-style explosives. More people have died in this drug war than U.S. casualties combined in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. President Calderon has deployed some 45,000 troops in cities like Cuidad Juarez, Tijuana and other hot spots which are beginning to look more and more like Baghdad and Kabul.
“These are really weapons of war,” said one local Mexican official.
But how has the Mexican government chosen to deal with all the violence and chaos? For one, through a new law passed last month, the government will seek to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana, cocaine, heroine and methamphetamines. The goal is to take the pressure off local police officials and to help them focus on the bigger drug criminals. The hope is that the prosecution of the leaders of these turf wars will eventually lead to fewer arms coming over the border.
A recent United States Joint Forces Command report listed Mexico just behind Pakistan as the country most likely to become a failed state. With little prospect of an end to the crisis, Mexico has moved these internal issues aside and made room to host over 1100 Non-governmental groups from 67 countries to foster “conventional” and nuclear disarmament next month.
Representatives from the UN Mission to Mexico were near silent on questions about their drug cartels. They only added a few words of “hopefulness” about the outcome of the conference. Ironically, Mexico is also the birthplace of the Treaty of Tlatelolco, the first ever nuclear-free zone to cover a large regional population.
“Member-states have added little to the knowledge of cross-border ammunition flows. It is very much part and parcel of the problem. ” said Daniel Prins, Chief of the Conventional Arms Branch, UN Office of Disarmament Affairs at a briefing held for UN correspondents this week. |
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