US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is heading to Mexico to pursue a broad diplomatic agenda that will be overshadowed by spiraling drug violence there and fears of greater cross-border spillover.
A day after the administration of US President Barack Obama announced it would send more money, technology and manpower to secure country’s southwestern frontier and help Mexican authorities in their battle against drug cartels, Clinton was to depart yesterday on a two-day trip to Mexico City and Monterrey aimed at bolstering anti-narcotics cooperation.
US officials said they did not want relations with Mexico to be dominated by the violence, which has spread from the border region on the Mexican side into some US border states.
The officials maintain that Clinton also wants to discuss trade, climate change and the global financial crisis in her meetings.
Among the contentious issues, new Mexican tariffs on 89 US products imposed last week in retaliation for a US decision to cancel a cross-border program that gave Mexican truckers access to US highways, a move that could affect about US$2.4 billion in annual trade.
Yet US officials acknowledge that the violent battle between Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s government and the cartels, along with bloody turf battles among the traffickers, are the most urgent issues the two countries face. Clinton’s talks are designed in part to encourage Mexican authorities to do more in response to the stepped up US effort, they say.
The escalating violence has set off alarm bells in the US and triggered a State Department travel alert last month that compared recent confrontations between Mexican authorities and the cartels to “small-unit combat.” Mexican officials say the violence killed 6,290 people last year and more than 1,000 in the first eight weeks of this year.
It has also led to a spate of kidnappings and home invasions in some southwestern US cities, prompting calls from state and local officials for troops to be sent to the border.
Clinton’s trip marks the start of several high-level meetings on the matter. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Attorney General Eric Holder are to meet Mexican officials early next month before Obama is expected to visit Mexico ahead of the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago.
On Tuesday, the Obama administration rolled out a multi-agency plan to protect the border, including the deployment to the border of nearly 500 federal agents and support personnel, building on efforts begun during the Bush administration. However, officials did not say where the additional agents would come from or how long they would stay in their new assignments.
“If the steps that we’ve taken do not get the job done, then we will do more,” Obama said on Tuesday during a prime-time news conference.
Obama said the US needs to do more to prevent guns and cash from flowing back to the cartels.
“That’s part of what’s financing their operations. That’s part of what’s arming them. That’s what makes them so dangerous,” he said. “And this is something that we take very seriously and we’re going to continue to work on diligently in the months to come.”
Mexico once would have bristled at the prospect of the US government sending more agents to the border, especially National Guard units.
Gaza is rapidly running out of its limited fuel supply and stocks of food staples might become tight, officials said, after Israel blocked the entry of fuel and goods into the war-shattered territory, citing fighting with Iran. The Israeli military closed all Gaza border crossings on Saturday after announcing airstrikes on Iran carried out jointly with the US. Israeli authorities late on Monday night said that they would reopen the Kerem Shalom crossing from Israel to Gaza yesterday, for “gradual entry of humanitarian aid” into the strip, without saying how much. Israeli authorities previously said the crossings could not be operated safely during
Hungarian authorities temporarily detained seven Ukrainian citizens and seized two armored cars carrying tens of millions of euros in cash across Hungary on suspicion of money laundering, officials said on Friday. The Ukrainians were released on Friday, following their detention on Thursday, but Hungarian officials held onto the cash, prompting Ukraine to accuse Hungary’s Russia-friendly government of illegally seizing the money. “We will not tolerate this state banditism,” Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said. The seven detained Ukrainians were employees of the Ukrainian state-owned Oschadbank, who were traveling in the two armored cars that were carrying the money between Austria and
Kosovar President Vjosa Osmani on Friday after dissolving the Kosovar parliament said a snap election should be held as soon as possible to avoid another prolonged political crisis in the Balkan country at a time of global turmoil. Osmani said it is important for Kosovo to wrap up the upcoming election process and form functional institutions for political stability as the war rages in the Middle East. “Precisely because the geopolitical situation is that complex, it is important to finish this electoral process which is coming up,” she said. “It is very hard now to imagine what will happen next.” Kosovo, which declared
MORE BANS: Australia last year required sites to remove accounts held by under-16s, with a few countries pushing for similar action at an EU level and India considering its own ban Indonesia on Friday said it would ban social media access for children under 16, citing threats from online pornography, cyberbullying, online fraud and Internet addiction. “Accounts belonging to children under 16 on high-risk platforms will start to be deactivated, beginning with YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, Bigo Live and Roblox,” Indonesian Minister of Communications and Digital Meutya Hafid said. “The government is stepping in so that parents no longer have to fight alone against the giants of the algorithm. Implementation will begin on March 28, 2026,” she said. The social media ban would be introduced in stages “until all platforms fulfill their
RSS