Mexico Rejects Merida Initiative
Betty McMahon
June 09, 2008 Balking at the strings attached to US aid, the Mexican government is saying no thanks to the Merida Initiative.
The $1.4 billion drug-fighting plan for Mexico and Central America includes helicopters and encrypted communication devices. But the US Congress has attached conditions to $350 to $400 million of the Initiative going to Mexico.
Democrats are asking for guarantees that Mexican police and military will not violate human rights. Amnesty International has reported that last year five people were arbitrarily arrested, tortured and killed by Mexican soldiers. Also, soldiers last year killed two children and three adults at a checkpoint, apparently by mistake, according to news reports. The conditions request that abuses like this, which cannot be tried in civil court, be prevented and prosecuted.
The Mexican government, angered and insulted at the conditions, called them a threat to their sovereignty.
“The bills approved by both chambers of the United States Congress contain some aspects that make them, in their current versions, unacceptable to our country,” Interior Minister Juan Camilo Mouriño said.
President Calderón said, “My government will defend at all times its national sovereignty and the interests of Mexicans and we will act strictly in accordance with the Constitution, and, of course, we will not accept conditions that simply are unacceptable.”
US lawmakers, meeting with Mexican officials in Monterey, are promising to try to ease the conditions by turning them into recommendations.
"We are going to fix the current wording in the proposal," U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, told reporters in Spanish.
A senior U.S. anti-drug official urged the U.S. Congress to pass the Merida Initiative because of the scale of the narcotics war. "The Merida Initiative is vital," the official said in an interview. "The hold-ups in Congress are not good. It could be seen we're letting Mexico down."
The official claims Mexico’s drug war is having positive results. A powerful coalition of drug gangs led by Mexico's most-wanted man, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, is collapsing. And internal conflicts, greed and pressure by Mexico's military are causing a split among gangs from the Pacific state of Sinaloa, with each group seeking new alliances to smuggle illegal drugs into the United States.
"The Sinaloa cartel is weakened, divided ... . There are internal disputes, rivalries, betrayals," the official, who declined to be identified, said in an interview. "You're going to see more violence."
Tags: Mexico Violence , Merida Initiative , Calderon , Mexico US Relations , Mexico Drugs
