Security & Strategic Review - July 2005

MEXICO-US | Buck-passing over border violence. In response to recent Mexican criticism that the US was not doing its share of the effort to curb drug-related violence along the common border, the State Department said, 'US support for Mexico includes promoting improved intelligence-sharing against illicit drug activities, enhanced bilateral teamwork to fight money laundering, and encouraging the increase of eradication programmes targeting opium poppy and marijuana. The United States also works with Mexico to attack criminal drug organisations and disrupt their activities, improve interdiction efforts on both sides of the US-Mexico border, decrease the diversion of precursor chemicals towards illicit drug production, and improve the successful prosecutions of drug criminals.' In mid June Mexico's federal security minister, Ramón Martí­n Huerta, had said, 'The US talks every day and we face the challenge every day; we have our strategies and we have not stopped for a single day.' He added that what was needed from the US was more cooperation on their side of the border: 'When we apply pressure on this side, [the drug traffickers] jump over to the other side.'

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