Pubdate: Fri, 6 Jun 2008
Source: Chicago Tribune (IL)
Copyright: 2008 Chicago Tribune Company
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/IuiAC7IZ
Website: http://www.chicagotribune.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/82
Author: Oscar Avila, Tribune correspondent
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/Merida+Initiative
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/area/Mexico (Mexico)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Felipe+Calderon

U.S. STRINGS COULD SNARL DRUG PACT

Mexico Says Aid Deal Shouldn't Meddle in Rights

MEXICO CITY -- Even though Mexico has just endured an especially 
deadly month, top Mexican officials said this week that they are 
ready to walk away from a historic U.S. aid package to help combat 
drug-related violence.

Mexican officials said they will not accept the Bush administration's 
proposed Merida Initiative if it includes requirements to overhaul 
their country's human-rights institutions, as a growing number of 
U.S. lawmakers insist.

The proposal would offer as much as $400 million in military 
equipment and technical assistance this year to help Mexico in an 
intensifying war against drug traffickers that has spilled into U.S. 
territory. Mexico reported nearly 500 drug-related killings in May, 
the highest total since President Felipe Calderon took office in 2006.

But while the Merida Initiative was initially touted as a new chapter 
in U.S.-Mexico cooperation, it has instead revived historic concerns 
about so-called meddling by the U.S. in Mexican internal politics. 
For years, Mexico considered it an insult when the U.S. unilaterally 
"certified" nations as being reliable partners in combating illicit 
drugs, a requirement dropped in 2003.

"We want to liberate our country of this tragedy of violence -- but 
as equals," Sen. Ulises Ramirez, chairman of the Public Security 
Committee, said in an interview. "We see [these conditions] as an 
excuse for intervening in Mexican sovereignty."

A U.S. congressional conference committee will soon meet to reconcile 
a House version of the program with a Senate proposal that requires 
Mexico to create an independent body to investigate alleged 
human-rights violations by its military.

The new measures are being pushed primarily by Democratic lawmakers, 
which has led the Bush administration to complain that the plan is 
being sabotaged. On Thursday, President George W. Bush urged Congress 
to pass the program quickly, "without putting unreasonable conditions 
on the vital aid."

Rights Groups Reach Out

Mexican human-rights groups sent a letter to U.S. lawmakers Thursday 
urging them to preserve other provisions in the Merida Initiative 
that would also ban torture by the Mexican military.

"With [Calderon's] strategy, the cost has been very high because of 
the military abuses," said Luis Arriaga Valenzuela, director of the 
Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez Human Rights Center and co-author of the 
letter. "We think that, in our bilateral relationship, a fundamental 
crux should be respect for human rights."

The Merida Initiative, which Bush originally proposed at $1.5 billion 
over 3 years, would include equipment and canine teams to inspect 
cargo, vehicles such as helicopters and funds for police training.

Even though Mexico would welcome that sort of aid, the reaction was 
harsh this week from Calderon's Cabinet over the strings that might 
be attached.

Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa said Mexico must reject a plan 
that doesn't place it "on equal footing." Interior Minister Juan 
Camilo Mourino called the changes "unacceptable."

The Bush administration was equally critical of the provisions 
gaining momentum in Congress. White House drug czar John Walters told 
reporters Tuesday that the requirements threatened to "sabotage" the agreement.

Renata Rendon, advocacy director for the Americas for Amnesty 
International USA, said the resistance shows that human-rights 
organizations are right to be wary. Amnesty International has not 
taken a formal position on the bill but has said there are risks in 
militarization and helped lead the push for stricter human-rights safeguards.

"If human rights do sabotage this agreement, we should think twice 
about who exactly we are trying to work with," Rendon said.

The proposed requirements are nothing new. The U.S. has insisted that 
Colombia be certified as protecting human rights before getting 
military and anti-drug assistance under its Plan Colombia.

Observers and elected officials in Mexico are unsure whether the 
Calderon administration would reject the aid package in the end. 
Mexican lawmakers will meet with U.S. counterparts Friday in 
Monterrey to push the Mexican position.

Tony Garza, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, released a statement 
stressing that the deliberations by Congress are not a path to 
restarting the kind of unilateral "certification" process that so 
irritated the Mexican government.

Lingering Hard Feelings

John Bailey, director of the Mexico Project at Georgetown University, 
said he isn't sure Calderon will accept the stipulations, given that 
such hard feelings still exist in Mexico from the 1980s and 1990s.

He said a compromise could be having a multilateral group, such as 
the Organization of American States, monitor human rights.

"Maybe it is inevitable that Calderon's government has to take that 
line: no strings attached. But now it's difficult to see a 
face-saving way to move forward," Bailey said. "The problem is that 
it's like a bicycle. If you are moving forward and something stops 
you, it's hard to move it forward again." 
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