| | |  News Around the Republic of Mexico 
Review of Mérida Initiative Tuesday
 The News
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March 22, 2010
| | US, Mexican officials meet to analyze the results (The News) | |
Mexico City – The 2nd Meeting of the Merida Initiative High-Level Consultative Group will take place in Mexico tomorrow.
The meeting will seek to assess and analyze the evolution of the Merida Plan, which makes provision for joint-action between Mexico and the United States in the war against drug trafficking on the border.
The meeting will be hosted by Mexico’s Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Patricia Espinosa Cantellano, and by U.S. State Secretary Hillary Clinton.
Public officials from the Mexican and U.S. governments will participate in the meeting to study the advances of the Merida Initiative in 2009 and plan out objectives for 2010.
According to the Mexican State Department, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, U.S. Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, and the U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael G. Mullen, will attend the meeting on Tuesday.
Will be attending: the Director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), Adam Szubin; the Deputy Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Michele M. Leonhart; the Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security, John O. Brennan; the Assistant Secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, John Morton; the Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair; and the Acting Deputy Attorney General, Gary Grindler.
From the Mexican government, Interior Secretary Fernando Gómez Mont, Public Security Secretary Genaro García Luna, Defense Secretary Guillermo Galván Galván, Navy Secretary Mariano Saynez Mendoza and Attorney General Arturo Chávez Chávez will participate in the meeting.
Until now, the United States has appropriated US$351 million to subsidize the Merida Initiative, although the budget has not been released in its totality yet. Barack Obama’s government has requested US$310 million from Congress in order to reinforce the Merida Initiative in Mexico.
On Thursday, the U.S. State Department said that the Merida Initiative, originally set to end in 2011, should be extended in time due to the amount of work there is to do. That same day, Gen. Gene Renuart, commander of the U.S. Northern Command, called for a “continuing partnership with Mexico”, because drug trafficking is “an 8- or 10-year long problem, not a one-year solution.”
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