Mexican President Says U.S. Not Doing Enough To Help In Mexican Drug War

Mexican President Felipe Calderon says the U.S. government isn’t doing enough to help Mexico in its fight against drug cartels. according to a report in the Miami Herald.

He also isn’t happy about U.S. diplomatic cables that he contends wrongly criticized Mexico’s anti-drug strategy, saying U.S.-Mexico relations were strained after the documents were made public by WikiLeaks.

“I have found cooperation on this matter with President (George W.) Bush and with President (Barack) Obama, but obviously institutional cooperation ends up being notoriously insufficient,” Calderon told the Mexican newspaper El Universal in an interview published Tuesday.

Calderon said the U.S. government should help by reducing drug use in the United States, the biggest consumer of illegal drugs in the world, and by stemming the flow of automatic rifles to Mexican drug gangs.

“How can Americans cooperate? By reducing drug use, which they haven’t done,” Calderon said. “And, the flow of weapons hasn’t slowed, it has increased.”

U.S. and Mexican officials have constantly said the two countries have reached an unprecedented level of cooperation, but the recently leaked U.S. cables show U.S. diplomats think Mexico doesn’t have a clear strategy in its fight against drug gangs and that infighting among Mexican federal agencies has hindered the crackdown.

More than 35,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence since Mexican President Felipe Calderon launched a military offensive against the country’s drug gangs shortly after taking office in December 2006.

Calderon said U.S.-Mexico relations were strained after the diplomatic cables were leaked. He said the cables show U.S. diplomats are ignorant about Mexico’s security situation and are prone to distort and exaggerate.

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