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."