CIA Director Porter Goss's brief, vague reference to potential instability in Mexico led to banner headlines in newspapers here and a harsh response from Mexico's government on Thursday.
"The CIA analysis is wrong, it's erroneous and it's false," said Interior Secretary Santiago Creel, considered a potential contender in Mexico's presidential race next year.
"It's also reprehensible for an agency of a foreign government to be expressing opinions about Mexican affairs," Creel said in a news conference.
"I reject interference in affairs of an internal character ... in which the CIA has no reason to be making opinions," Creel added.
The tough words results from the briefest of mentions during Goss' testimony on Wednesday before the US Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence.
It occurred in a section of his written report on "potential areas for instability" that referred to "potential flashpoints" in some of the eight Latin American nations with elections next year.
"Campaigning for the 2006 presidential election in Mexico is likely to stall progress on fiscal, labor and energy reforms," Goss said.
The comments passed almost unnoticed in the US, but in Mexico City, the daily newspaper El Sol made it the top story of the day: "Mexico unstable, according to the CIA."
A rival paper, Milenio, led with the headline: "The CIA predicts `alarming risks' for the campaigns."
At his news conference, Creel -- President Vicente Fox's top Cabinet secretary, said, "We know that [the CIA] frequently is mistaken and causes erroneous decisions."
"What we are going to have here is not a conflict but a democratic electoral competition, as intense or more so as those in the United States," he said.
Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha told reporters he saw "no elements that could cause what [Goss] said, what he affirmed in that report."
Mexican President Fox himself hurried past reporters who tried to ask him about the CIA official's statements during an appearance in the port city of Veracruz.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion