U.S. Anti-Drug Aid Would Target Mexico

2007-08-09

Richard Moore

       "Who would Congress be providing assistance to, under what
        terms and conditions, and how would Congress know the
        support is not going to the very people who are engaged in
        this type of criminal activity?" asked Tim Rieser, a senior
        foreign policy aide for Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), who
        chairs the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on foreign
        operations. "There is bipartisan concern about the Bush
        administration's lack of meaningful consultation with
        Congress. They see Congress as their personal ATM machine,
        not as an equal branch of government."

Good points, given that the CIA controls the world drug trade. There is also the
fact that 'anti-drug' programs like these are typically used to attack dissident
rural populations.

rkm

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Original source URL:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/07/AR2007080702114.html?wpisrc=newsletter

U.S. Anti-Drug Aid Would Target Mexican Cartels
Deal to Include Training, Gear
By Manuel Roig-Franzia and Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, August 8, 2007; A01

MEXICO CITY, Aug. 7 -- The Bush administration is close to sealing a major, 
multiyear aid deal to combat drug cartels in Mexico that would be the biggest 
U.S. anti-narcotics effort abroad since a seven-year, $5 billion program in 
Colombia, according to U.S. lawmakers, congressional aides and Mexican 
authorities.

Negotiators for Mexico and the United States have made significant progress 
toward agreement on an aid plan that would include telephone tapping equipment, 
radar to track traffickers' shipments by air, aircraft to transport Mexican 
anti-drug teams and assorted training, sources said. Delicate questions remain 
-- primarily regarding Mexican sensitivities about the level of U.S. activity on
Mexican soil -- but confidence is running high that a deal will be struck soon.

"I'm sure that it's going to be hundreds of millions of dollars," Rep. Henry 
Cuellar (D-Tex.) said in an interview. "If we're going to be successful in 
cutting out this cancer over there, we're going to have to invest a large 
amount."

Cuellar, who has already proposed legislation to increase aid to Mexico, 
predicted that an announcement could be made as soon as Aug. 20, when President 
Bush is scheduled to meet with Mexican President Felipe Calderón and Canadian 
Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Quebec. A Mexican government source cautioned 
against projecting an exact timetable despite "advances" in the talks.

The plans are being discussed at a time when Mexico is struggling to contain a 
war among major drug cartels that has cost more than 3,000 lives in the past 
year and has horrified Mexicans with images of beheadings and videotaped 
assassinations. Calderón has impressed U.S. officials by extraditing a record 
number of drug suspects to the United States and by dispatching more than 20,000
federal police officers and soldiers to fight the trafficking organizations, but
that effort has failed to stop the violence.

The anti-drug aid package would represent a major shift in relations after years
of tension and mutual suspicion among law enforcement agencies on both sides of 
the border. "It's astonishing and a sea change," said a senior Republican aide 
who works on drug policy issues. "It's a real recognition that Calderón has a 
problem. And his success or failure will impact us. The days of the 
finger-pointing are over."

The aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he believes the program will
be well received in Washington once it's unveiled.

In Mexico, authorities have shied from talking publicly about the plan, 
concerned that the country's inherent suspicion of American meddling will prompt
widespread rejection among Mexicans. The Bush administration has been developing
the proposal quietly, so quietly that some people in Congress are beginning to 
complain about an aura of secrecy.

"Who would Congress be providing assistance to, under what terms and conditions,
and how would Congress know the support is not going to the very people who are 
engaged in this type of criminal activity?" asked Tim Rieser, a senior foreign 
policy aide for Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), who chairs the Senate 
Appropriations subcommittee on foreign operations. "There is bipartisan concern 
about the Bush administration's lack of meaningful consultation with Congress. 
They see Congress as their personal ATM machine, not as an equal branch of 
government."

Persuading fellow legislators that the aid is vital and won't fall into the 
wrong hands, Cuellar said, is "going to be a marketing endeavor, or let me put 
it this way, an educational endeavor." Republican and Democratic aides said it 
is unclear whether the Bush administration will try to push for an emergency 
supplemental appropriation for next year's foreign aid budget or wait another 
year.

Mexico already appears to be laying the groundwork to frame the plan not so much
as an aid package but as the United States facing up to problems that are a 
consequence of American drug consumption. Calderón, often a cautious public 
speaker, has sternly called for the United States to pay more to combat the 
cartels.

"The language that they're using is that the U.S. has a large responsibility for
this problem," said Ana María Salazar, a former high-ranking Clinton 
administration drug official who was involved in implementing the U.S.-funded 
program for Bogota, known as Plan Colombia.

U.S. lawmakers, who stressed that the initiative for Mexico is not modeled on 
Plan Colombia, have been traveling to Mexico to meet with legislators here in 
hopes of easing concerns. "We're seeing a Mexican Congress that's more engaged, 
that's willing and able for the first time in history to be a partner with the 
[U.S.] administration, and they're asking the questions about what the 
president's policies are, what the authorities need, and what are the 
implications of working closely with the U.S.," Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Tex.) 
said in an interview. "We've been neighbors and allies but this takes that 
relationship to a new level."

In an interview, Thomas Shannon, assistant secretary of state for the Western 
Hemisphere, declined to discuss details of the plan. But he noted that Bush has 
recently met with Calderón and Central America leaders to discuss ways to work 
together to fight against drug traffickers and gangs that have besieged the 
region.

Central America is a major transshipment point for Colombian cocaine that 
arrives by sea; Mexican cartels funnel tons of cocaine, marijuana and 
methamphetamine across the border into the United States.

"All three of us, the United States, Mexico and the Central American countries, 
had to find a way to coordinate our activities and work better together and 
develop a regional strategy to combat the problems that we face," Shannon said.

The Mexican government cringes at comparisons with Colombia, which unlike Mexico
is locked in a 40-year-old guerrilla war and also is the world's largest cocaine
producer. As part of Plan Colombia, which began in 2000, the United States 
provided Black Hawk helicopters, sensitive intelligence-gathering technology, 
military, police and intelligence training, and a fleet of crop-dusters to help 
the Colombian government push back Marxist guerrillas and eradicate drug crops. 
Though that program helped President Álvaro Uribe curtail violence, critics have
said it fell far short in its initial objective of delivering a mortal blow to 
the cocaine business.

Mexican authorities are leery of allowing the U.S. military into the country, 
even for training purposes, because of historical wounds that date to the 
Mexican-American War of 1846-48. Maureen Meyer, a policy analyst for the 
Washington Office on Latin America, a Washington policy group, said Mexican 
anti-drug police have a history of receiving low-key training from American 
specialists. But large-scale training on Mexican soil would be another matter, 
she said.

"That would be the most contentious point, with the Mexican Congress and 
Mexicans in general," she said.

That hesitance could block American specialists from going to Mexico to conduct 
training for troops and police, as well as for prosecutors and judges. Many U.S.
officials say that such flexibility would be critical to the plan.

"How do we provide assistance without making the Mexicans too uncomfortable?" 
Cuellar asked. "That's going to be tightrope we have to walk."

Forero reported from Bogota, Colombia.

© 2007 The Washington Post Company
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