PEACE & SECURITY | Creating a more stable world
08 February 2008
Merida Initiative Seeks To Thwart Western Hemisphere Crime
President Bush asks for $550 million in 2009 for program
Washington -- Drug trafficking, international crime and illegal arms trafficking in the Western Hemisphere require regional solutions. To that end, President Bush has proposed an initiative that would combine U.S. domestic efforts with broader regional cooperation to multiply the anti-crime efforts.
As part of the U.S. 2009 federal budget, Bush asked Congress to provide $550 million to support the multiyear Merida Initiative, which will address common security concerns expressed by the leaders of Mexico and Central America. The program, first announced by Bush in October 2007, is designed to enhance government efforts to halt drug trafficking and transnational organized crime, while also improving the rule of law, says Thomas Shannon, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs.
"President Bush and the leaders of Central America and Mexico agree that transnational crime is a regional problem, which will require regional solutions," he said in February 7 testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere.
Subcommittee Chairman Eliot Engel acknowledged that the U.S. interagency counternarcotics community estimates that 90 percent of the cocaine coming into the United States from South America was transited through Mexico and Central America in 2004 and 2005.
"And drug-related violence has left more than 4,000 Mexicans dead in the last two years. No one can deny the severity of this problem," Engel said at the hearing.
The "United States has a moral responsibility to help," since it consumes most of the illegal drugs coming through Mexico and sends most of the guns to Mexico, he said.
The United States is committed to doing everything possible to stem the flow of arms and laundered money to Mexico and Central America, "where they do much harm, either in the form of violence or corruption," Shannon said.
"The effects of drug trafficking activity are clear in Mexico, along the borders, in the United States and in Central America. Just in the month of January, we have seen police chiefs and their families gunned down just across our border in Mexico: two precinct commanders and one subcommander in Tijuana on January 15; a Ciudad Juarez police captain on January 20," Shannon said.
In addition, the illicit trafficking in arms is a major obstacle to security and economic development in Mexico and Central America. "Throughout the hemisphere, terrorist groups, insurgents and drug traffickers acquire arms through illegal diversion, theft and smuggling," Shannon said.
"Our domestic law enforcement efforts to reduce demand, and control arms and cash flows going south, will help cut off the oxygen which, along with fear and intimidation, sustain these criminal organizations."
Transcripts from the House subcommittee hearing can be obtained from the House Foreign Affairs Committee Web site.
