U.S., MEXICO AT ODDS OVER $1.4 BILLION AID PACKAGE TO BATTLE DRUG CARTELS

Distrust Sullies Initiative Designed To Battle Drug Cartels

Doubts are growing about whether the United States and Mexico's $1.4
billion aid package can successfully combat increasingly violent
drug-trafficking cartels.

There are mounting questions about whether the so-called Merida
Initiative is too little, too late and too compromised by competing
and misplaced priorities, according to interviews with current and
former officials and outside experts, and a review of government documents.

Both nations agree that the Mexican cartels have morphed into
transnational organized crime syndicates that pose an urgent threat to
national and regional security. But there is little agreement over
where the U.S. aid money should go.

That uncertainty, which comes at a time of intensifying violence on
the border, is likely to present the incoming Obama administration
with hard choices in deciding how to work with Mexico to fight drug
trafficking, gun running, corruption and other crime that has spread
into the United States.

When Congress passed the first installment of the three-year aid
package in June, after much debate, it contained at least 33 programs
in four categories, giving about $400 million to Mexico for this
fiscal year and another $65 million to various Central American
countries, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

The first transfer of money was delayed until early December, and
continued squabbling and other problems have held up delivery of most
direct assistance.

A senior State Department official confirmed that Mexico will have to
wait more than a year for the delivery of at least two U.S. transport
helicopters and two reconnaissance planes that the U.S. ally says it
needs desperately for interdiction and rapid response.

Meanwhile, some senior U.S. counter-narcotics officials and lawmakers
say that the U.S.-Mexico relationship has been so polluted for decades
by mistrust, neglect and failure to collaborate that the two countries
must build much of their anti-drug strategy from scratch, at a time
when more than 5,000 people have died in drug-related slayings this
year in Mexico.

They fear that the cartels are so strong and well-funded that Mexican
government forces will continue to be under-trained, under-equipped
and outgunned for years, despite U.S. aid.

"You need a robust internal capacity to identify the cancer, cut it
out and move on while checking the margins to make sure it hasn't
spread. And they have never done that. They never institutionalized
law enforcement at any level," Michael A. Braun, former assistant
director and chief of operations for the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration, said of the Mexican government.

U.S. authorities also are deeply troubled that corruption in the top
echelons of Mexican President Felipe Calderon's administration could
undermine the Merida effort. Some said the recent arrest of Mexico's
former drug czar, Noe Ramirez Mandujano, shows that Calderon's effort
to root out corruption is working.

But while some U.S. officials maintain that they now share more
information than ever with Mexico, others confirmed that they are
urgently conducting damage assessments following Ramirez's arrest, and
after Mexico revealed that cartel operatives had infiltrated Interpol,
the U.S. embassy in Mexico City and even DEA operations in the country.

Calderon will probably find more corruption within his government and
even his own administration, but he deserves credit for battling the
cartels since his election two years ago, said Braun, now managing
partner at the Spectre Group International security consulting firm.

"They know they have a monumental undertaking, but you have to start
somewhere," he said. "If you don't, in another five years the cartels
will be running Mexico."

Since it was first unveiled in the Mexican city of Merida in October
2007, the latest bilateral drug plan has been criticized as a
confusing patchwork of dozens of questionable programs, ranging from
military and law enforcement training and high-tech drug detection
scanners to gang-prevention programs. Many have complained that no one
is coordinating the initiative.

"You've got so many different agencies involved, who would you even
put in charge of it?" said a State Department International Narcotics
and Law Enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Privately, Mexican officials are furious with President George W. Bush
for not doing more to interdict the flood of assault weapons coming in
from U.S. gun shops and gun shows; one senior Washington-based Mexican
official said they now comprise about 90 percent of the cartels' arsenals.

And Mexico continues to accuse Washington of doing far too little to
diminish the southbound flow of billions of dollars in laundered drug
proceeds and drug precursor chemicals, even though both are addressed
in the initiative.

Arturo Sarukhan, Mexico's ambassador to the United States and a former
senior counter-narcotics official, cautioned that Merida is only a
first step. It won't be easy to improve cross-border interdiction
efforts, intelligence sharing and integration of both countries'
counter-narcotics efforts after so much neglect, he added.