US Vows to Help in Mexico's Drug War

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks during a news conference in Mexico City. "The grim truth is that these murders are part of a much larger cycle of violence and crime that have impacted communities on both sides of the border," Clinton said.

Hilllary Clinton, the US secretary of state, has pledged to help Mexico broaden its war on drug gangs, saying the cartels were not just at war with the Mexican government but with the US as well.

The focus now, US officials say, is that some of the $1.6bn aid package, known as the Merida Initiative to fight the drug war, will be redirected to target the roots causes that generate the violence.

Some of the money will be used to reinforce social programs and government institutions that combat the drug cartels.

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Clinton Visits Mexico Today for Talks on Drug War

Clinton, Gates, other top US officials head to Mexico with drug war on the agenda.

The Associated Press

The U.S. has sent helicopters, x-ray vans and sniffer dogs to help Mexico tackle drug cartels, but Mexican leaders meeting Tuesday with a team of U.S. Cabinet secretaries say that to really help, the Americans must tackle their problem of drug consumption.

Both presidents Barack Obama and Felipe Calderon have repeatedly stressed that theirs is a “cooperative effort” to disrupt Mexico’s powerful drug cartels, whose power struggles with each other and authorities have led to the killings of 17,900 people since Calderon took office in late 2006.

U.S. officials see a strategic problem with their neighbor’s surging violence and unstable judicial and law enforcement systems. Mexican officials blame that instability on the insatiable U.S. demand for lucrative and illegal narcotics.

As part of the solution, the U.S. promised $1.3 billion in aid under the Merida Initiative in 2008. But with just $128 million delivered, a team of U.S. Cabinet secretaries and other top advisers planned to meet with Mexican counterparts to discuss ways to refocus some of that spending in more effective ways.

The full day of U.S.-Mexico talks gained gravity after an American consulate worker, her husband and the husband of a Mexican employee were gunned down two weeks ago in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas. Suspected drug gangsters chased down and opened fire on two SUVs carrying the families from a children’s party, killing the adults and wounding two children.

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Clinton Plans to Visit Mexico

Military, Intell Chiefs to Join Clinton on Mexico Visit.

Washington DC - Drug-related violence blamed for last weekend’s death of two U.S. citizens in the border city of Juarez will be at the top of the agenda when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visits Mexico next week, Washington’s top diplomat for Latin America said Friday.

The situation in Ciudad Juarez, just across the border from El Paso, Texas, “is very serious,” Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Arturo Valenzuela told reporters at a briefing on Clinton’s upcoming trip.

Her visit will be the occasion for a meeting of the bilateral High Level Consultative Group to review the progress of the Merida initiative, a U.S.-funded regional plan to battle drug cartels and organized crime.

Mexico has received hundreds of millions of dollars in crime-fighting aid under the initiative.

Clinton will be accompanied to Mexico by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, Valenzuela said.

Lesley Ann Enriquez, an official at the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juarez, and husband Arthur H. Redelfs were killed last Saturday by gunmen who fired on their vehicle on a busy street in the Mexican city.

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