MEXICO CITY — The Mexican government warned Monday it would not accept conditions that the U.S. Congress has imposed on an aid package to combat drug trafficking.
The Merida Initiative would provide $1.4 billion over several years to help Mexico, Central America, the Dominican Republic and Haiti combat drug trafficking.
But the U.S. House and Senate have imposed several conditions on the aid, including guarantees of civilian investigations into human rights abuses by the Mexican military.
Interior Secretary Juan Camilo Mourino said the conditions were “counterproductive and profoundly contrary to the object and spirit” of the initiative announced by U.S. and Mexican officials last year.
“The initiatives approved by both chambers of the U.S. Congress incorporate some aspects that, in their current versions, are unacceptable for our country,” Mourino said.
The House and Senate approved different amounts for the first installment of the aid, and the two versions must be reconciled. Both bills fell well short of the $500 million sought by the Bush administration.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon has earned strong support from Washington for his crackdown against drug cartels, carried out by more than 25,000 troops nationwide.
Drug violence has surged as cartels fight back with increasingly brazen attacks against security forces. Last week, a senior police officer appealed for more powerful weapons after seven federal officers were killed in a shootout with members of the Sinaloa cartel.
Give them the money without preconditions or conditions and let them do what they do best.
Eleven alleged hit men for a powerful drug cartel were captured Tuesday at two Mexico City mansions stocked with grenades and automatic weapons — a day after Mexican authorities reported nabbing one of the cartel’s reputed leaders.Police said it was the first time they have found a safe house linked to the cartel in the capital city.
“Yes, the cartel is operating here in Mexico City,” said Edgar Millan, top commander of Mexico’s national federal police, at a news conference following pre-dawn raids on two houses in southern Mexico City. Eight men were arrested in one raid and three in the other.
Millan said the men, whose identities were not released, were part of three cartel “commando” groups that may have been preparing attacks in response to a federal crackdown on drug trafficking.
The suspects were lined up in the homes’ spacious living rooms and presented to reporters alongside caches of seized weapons, including 20 fragmentation grenades, automatic weapons, rifles, and materials presumably intended for constructing a drug lab.
Police also found 40 bulletproof vests, eight of which bore the initials FEDA, which Millan said was likely a Spanish acronym for “Arturo’s Special Forces.” Authorities also found an unspecified amount of cash in one of the homes.
Arturo Beltran Leyva is one of five brothers believed to be top lieutenants of the Sinaloa drug cartel, based in the northwestern Mexican state of the same name. A second brother, Alfredo Beltran Leyva, was arrested early Monday in the Sinaloa capital of Culiacan with two suitcases containing $900,000, an assault rifle, a luxury SUV and 11 expensive watches, the army said.
The U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Tony Garza, praised Monday’s arrest as “a significant victory.”
Army Gen. Luis Arturo Oliver Cen said the arrested Beltran Leyva commanded two groups of hit men for the cartel, whose reach extends from the northwestern state of Sonora to the southern state of Oaxaca. He was allegedly in charge of transporting drugs, bribing officials and laundering money for the cartel, which is led by Mexico’s most-wanted drug lord, Joaquin Guzman.
Guzman escaped from federal prison in 2001 in a laundry cart after bribing guards.
Alfredo Beltran Leyva’s arrest follows two weeks of bloody confrontations along the U.S.-Mexico border between federal agents and gunmen suspected of working for the Arellano Felix and Gulf cartels, rivals of the Sinaloa.
Soldiers also randomly stopped cars in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, in search of assailants who shot and wounded a state police chief on Monday night. The attack came the day after a Juarez police captain was shot to death in his patrol car.
Also Monday, gunmen firing from a car shot and killed Judge Ernesto Palacios in a suburb of the northern Mexican city of Monterrey, police said. He had been overseeing the trial of two alleged hit men arrested in 2005.
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