Plan Mexico

What next may be Plan Mexico. I have been commenting to people that Mexico appears to be headed toward becoming the next Colombia (ie, a militarized drug war that fails to either reduce the drug trade or bring security to the people). But I didn't realize a deal for U.S. aid to do just that was already in the works.

U.S. May Boost Aid to Fight Drug Trafficking in Mexico
Plan highlights concern that violence could move north of border

12:28 AM CDT on Thursday, May 10, 2007

By ALFREDO CORCHADO / The Dallas Morning News
acorchado@dallasnews.com

WASHINGTON – The U.S. and Mexican governments are discussing a plan to significantly expand U.S. assistance to Mexico to fight drug traffickers and their widening violence, officials from both countries say.

The plan, formally called a "regional security initiative," would represent a departure for the Mexican government, which has accepted only limited U.S. aid in the past out of a sense of nationalism and fears that more significant aid would come with strings attached. It would also represent an acknowledgment by Mexico that its military-led offensive against drug traffickers is falling short of its goal of controlling violence.

The plan underscores U.S. concerns that violence in Mexico could continue to spill over into the United States, a U.S. official said.

"What we [now] get from the U.S. doesn't correspond with the size of the challenge we face, and that has to change if we are to be more effective against a common enemy," Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora said Wednesday in a phone interview from Madrid, Spain, where he was attending the International Drug Enforcement Conference. "That's the issue on the table."

Mr. Medina Mora said he has had several discussions with his U.S. counterparts during the conference about continuing efforts "to deepen our cooperation in a more articulate, systematic way in order to be more effective."

Drug trafficking groups, he said, are transnational organizations with distribution routes and consumer markets beyond Mexico. "There's a greater realization that this is a shared responsibility," he said.

Some officials involved in the discussions referred to the effort as Plan Mexico, an apparent reference to the multibillion-dollar U.S. assistance program known as Plan Colombia, which is designed to fight cocaine producers and their rebel allies in that South American nation. But U.S. and Mexican officials, including Mr. Medina Mora, denied that the amount of assistance for Mexico would be on the scale of Plan Colombia.

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