US ups border gun checks as Mexico drug deaths jump
16 Jan 2008 23:12:32 GMT Source: Reuters
By Catherine Bremer MEXICO CITY, Jan 16 (Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey promised Mexico tougher controls on guns flowing illegally over the border on Wednesday as Mexican drug cartels have slain 115 people already this month. Visiting Mexican counterpart Eduardo Medina Mora in his first foreign visit since taking office in November, Mukasey said the spurt in violence in the first two weeks of 2008 was a signal to keep up the pressure on what he called "drug terrorists". Mexico, which has been fighting a nationwide war on powerful cartels for the past year, has urged its northern neighbor to stem the flood of U.S. firearms, grenades and military weapons that wind up in the hands of Mexican gangs. "In a perverse kind of way the level of violence suggests a level of success in dealing with the drug problem," Mukasey told a round-table with foreign media in Mexico City. "They may very well now be so constricted that they feel a necessity to hit back the way they've hit back. That's not to say we rejoice in the violence, but we have no choice but to continue the pressure and to confront them," he added. Mukasey said an offer last year by U.S. President George W. Bush to inject $1.4 billion in equipment into Mexico's war on drug cartels was very much alive and should not be held up by the U.S. presidential election this year, as some fear. Congress is debating the first $550 million chunk of the "Merida Initiative" aid agreed in the town of Merida, Mexico, last year, and Mukasey said the odds of it being approved "ought to be good". "I don't see why a presidential election should interfere with this effort," he said earlier at a news conference to flag increased U.S. efforts to stem the flow of guns into Mexico. Under the so-called Project Gunrunner, Washington plans to extend "e-trace" tracking software to its embassies across Mexico that Mexican investigators can use to trace dealers in the United States where guns seized from drug hitmen originated. More U.S. police will be deployed in border towns to check gun dealers' records and work on tip-offs from Mexico to "squeeze weapons off at the source", Mukasey said. Medina Mora said January's surge in bloodshed so far -- which saw a sleeping 3-year-old boy and his mother shot dead in their beds -- was "intolerable" and the 25,000 troops and federal police fighting the gangs would respond by stepping up their efforts. "Mexico is much stronger than the criminal gangs," he said. (Editing by Philip Barbara)
A federal police searches a group of passengers for drugs and weapons as others stand guard at a check point in the border city of Rio Bravo in the northeastern state ...
