Mexico City: The United States and Mexico are pushing for a security arrangement to replace the Mérida initiative, which will focus on the exchange of information and the root causes of violence, Mexican government sources said. he said.
Key elements of the new agreement will be up for talks on Friday during US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Mexico City, where the Biden administration will hold its first US-Mexico high-level security talks.
Security cooperation between the neighbors suffered a major setback last October when US anti-narcotics agents arrested former Mexican Defense Minister Salvador Cienfuegos, angering the Mexican government. Cienfuegos was released but the arrest strained relations and cut security cooperation.
Two Mexican government officials said the new agreement, which has yet to be named, would replace the multi-billion dollar Mérida Initiative, a plan that was launched in 2007 and was initially used by Mexico in the fight against drug cartels. was given US military aid.
“The Merida Initiative is dead,” one of the Mexican officials said on condition of anonymity.
Officials noted that the new agreement would indicate that the two neighbors were further aggravated by the diplomatic storm triggered by the arrest of Cienfuegos on drug charges at Los Angeles International Airport.
The State Department did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. Neither did Mexico’s foreign ministry.
But State Department spokesman Ned Price asked at a media briefing on Thursday whether Merida was dead, with Washington saying the security cooperation was “due for an updated look.”
“The Mérida Initiative helped strengthen Mexico’s rule of law and drug capacity,” Price said. “We want to see that those benefits are preserved, (and) that the collaboration deepens.”
because of violence
The new deal did not expect Mexico to receive military equipment or funding, and instead focused on information exchange, inter-agency cooperation and personnel training, the Mexican official said.
Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador views the Mérida Initiative as part of his ties to previous governments and funding of security equipment in the 2000s. In recent years the program has supported justice reform, immigration infrastructure and drug demand reduction.
The official said the agreement would make clear that Mexico and Washington shared a responsibility to address chronic cross-border problems such as illegal arms smuggling and the demand for illegal drugs in the United States.
It would be a victory for Mexico, but it also meant that the agreement also implied that Mexico was acknowledging that the security concerns of the United States were its own, the official said.
The official said the targets of the new agreement to tackle violent crime and arms smuggling are likely to be announced gradually, not on Friday. For now, both sides will focus on explaining how they will work together under this.
A second government source, a senior Mexican security official, confirmed that the Mérida agreement has been “stalled”, adding that a key component of the new agreement will be programs that tackle the “root causes” of violence in Mexico. .
moving on
The capture of Cienfuegos took the López Obrador administration by surprise, and fueled concerns about Mexico’s long-standing US anti-narcotics agents affecting its sovereignty. This prompted the Congress of Mexico to pass legislation to make it difficult for US agents to operate on Mexican soil.
US officials have complained that relations soured and the inability of US agents to freely move around Mexico had hindered efforts to fight the powerful cartel.
A senior Mexican security official said that while there is room for negotiations, US agents will not be able to act as before the arrest of Cienfuegos and the passage of new Congressional legislation.
“It’s out… because the president really believes in sovereignty,” he said.
Disclaimer: This post has been self-published from the agency feed without modification and has not been reviewed by an editor
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