| | |  News Around the Republic of Mexico 
U.S. and Mexico Revise Joint Antidrug Strategy
 Ginger Thompson & Marc Lacey - New York Times
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March 24, 2010
| | Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton with her Mexican counterpart, Patricia Espinosa, during a joint press conference in Mexico City on Tuesday. (Ronaldo Schemidt/Agence France-Presse) | |
Mexico City — Responding to a growing sense that Mexico’s military-led fight against drug traffickers is not gaining ground, the United States and Mexico set their counternarcotics strategy on a new course on Tuesday by refocusing their efforts on strengthening civilian law enforcement institutions and rebuilding communities crippled by poverty and crime.
The $331 million plan was at the center of a visit to Mexico by several senior Obama administration officials, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates; Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano; Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence.
The revised strategy has many elements meant to expand on and improve programs already under way as part of the so-called Mérida Initiative that was started by the Bush administration three years ago, including cooperation among American and Mexican intelligence agencies and American support for training Mexican police officers, judges, prosecutors and public defenders.
Under the new strategy, officials said, American and Mexican agencies would work together to refocus border enforcement efforts away from building a better wall to creating systems that would allow goods and people to be screened before they reach the crossing points. The plan would also provide support for Mexican programs intended to strengthen communities where socioeconomic hardships force many young people into crime.
The most striking difference between the old strategy and the new one is the shift away from military assistance. More than half of the $1.3 billion spent under Mérida was used to buy aircraft, inspection equipment and information technology for the Mexican military and police. Next year’s foreign aid budget provides for civilian police training, not equipment.
Military-to-military cooperation was expected to continue, officials said, despite reports by human rights groups of an increase in human rights violations by Mexican soldiers. Experts at the Washington Office on Latin America, an organization that advocates for human rights and social justice, said that Pentagon assistance to Mexican counter-narcotics efforts amounted to $78.2 million in 2009 and 2010.
In a news conference, Mrs. Clinton echoed comments she made a year ago, when she acknowledged that it was Mexicans who bore the brunt of drug-related violence, which was driven in large part by American demand.
“Yes we accept our share of the responsibility,” Mrs. Clinton said. “As I said when I first came here a year ago, I think standing right here on this stage, the United States is your partner and your supporter.
“We know that the demand for drugs drives much of this illicit trade, that guns purchased in the United States are used to facilitate violence here in Mexico. The United States must, and is doing its part to help you, and us, meet those challenges.”
This revised strategy, officials said, would first go into effect in Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez, the largest cities on Mexico’s border with the United States. Ciudad Juárez, a city of 1.7 million, has become a symbol of the Mexican government’s failed attempts to rein in the drug gangs.
Around 3,400 people were killed there in the last year, including an American employee at the United States Consulate and her husband, as well as the Mexican husband of another consulate employee.
The public outcry generated by the violence in Ciudad Juárez forced President Felipe Calderón of Mexico to acknowledge that the drug war would not be won with troops alone.
American officials defended President Calderón and the Mexican military. President Obama expressed his confidence in Mexico in a telephone call with President Calderón on Monday night.
“We know that in a violent situation like the one created by the drug cartels, it is necessary to work even harder to protect and promote human rights,” Mrs. Clinton said. “And when you deal with people who engage in beheading, who murder children who won a football game, who are total nonrespecters of life and human rights, you have to work extra hard to maintain human rights, to maintain the rule of law.”
Ms. Napolitano said she had made several trips to the border in recent months to work with Mexican authorities on new law enforcement techniques, including the kind of community policing efforts credited with significantly reducing violent crime in Los Angeles and Chicago.
In the coming months, State Department officials said, the United States and Mexico would open a joint command center in Mexico City.
“We are looking at everything that can work,” Mrs. Clinton said. “Our goal in this intensive consultation is to see what works and pursue it, and to see what doesn’t and improve it.”
Elisabeth Malkin and Antonio Betancourt contributed reporting.
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