US & Mexican Activists Target Merida Initiative, Trade Pacts

Promising $1.4 billion in new funding to fight the drug war over the next three years, the Bush White House’s Merida Initiative is a strategic cornerstone of the outgoing administration’s envisioned future relationship with Mexico and Central America. Thomas Shannon, US Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs has called the assistance package a “new paradigm” of regional security cooperation.

Still awaiting approval by the US Congress, the Merida Initiative, which some compare with Plan Colombia, would significantly increase assistance to the Mexican military, aid Mexico with high-tech communications and surveillance equipment, and increase the training of Mexican security forces. According to US State Department anti-narcotics official David Johnson, Washington trained 4,627 Mexican police in 2007, and plans to train an additional 5,800 in 2008.

The Merida Initiative [was] expected to be a major topic of discussion when US Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Mexican Interior Minister Juan Camilo Mauriño meet in Los Cabos, Baja California Sur, [last] week.”*

*From: http://www.mexidata.info
Traducido: usando Google o Altavista/Babel Fish

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