(OFFICIAL)-U.S will guide Mexico drug aid cash-Senate leader
30 Nov 2007 16:24:27 GMT Source: Reuters
(Corrects seventh graph to show that Reid did not visit Bolivia) By Catherine Bremer MEXICO CITY, Nov 29 (Reuters) - Washington wants to work with Mexico to make sure the $1.4 billion it is injecting into a crackdown on drug gangs is well spent and human rights are respected, a senior U.S. official said on Thursday. U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he had agreed during talks with Mexican President Felipe Calderon that for the so-called Merida Initiative to work it is vital the U.S. government be fully involved alongside Mexico. "This must be more than a handshake and a pat on the head," Reid said of Washington's pledge to help finance the continuation of a crackdown on drug trafficking started by Calderon almost a year ago. "We are going to look at it to make sure the money is going to the right places ... and make sure it's a program that improves human rights, not anything that would endanger human rights," he told a news conference. Calderon, whose army crackdown on drug gangs has drawn allegations of rights abuses in a few cases, has vowed to invest $7 billion in the operation over the next three years. Mexican officials have been adamant that U.S. troops will not enter Mexican territory as part of Washington's involvement. Reid was in Mexico with a delegation of Republican and Democratic Senators as part of a regional tour that also took them to Paraguay. They will visit Guatemala on Friday. Reid said he also discussed organized crime and border security during an intense two-hour meeting with Calderon. He said the United States wanted to do more to combat organized crime and drug smuggling further south, in Central and South America, and look at U.S. demand for illegal drugs. "We recognize that part of the problem is the United States, and the voracious appetite we have for these illegal substances," he said. "It's our problem too." Calderon made cracking down on drug cartels his first priority on taking power last December, after turf wars over smuggling routes north killed some 2,100 people last year. Despite his deployment of 25,000 troops to the worst troublespots, drug gang killings have reached 2,350 this year. The crackdown has netted a series of high-level smugglers, however, and chalked up some large drug hauls, including a 23-tonne cocaine shipment from Colombia, one of the world's biggest ever drug busts.
