STOP BORDER FLOW OF GUNS, PANEL URGES

MEXICO CITY -- The U.S. government should reimpose a ban on automatic
weapons sales and clamp down harder on the illegal export of guns and
cash to Mexico, a binational panel of scholars and former government
officials urges in a report released Friday.

Mexico in turn must do more to stop to flow of illegal drugs and
immigrants to the United States, in part through the creation of a
unified and effective border police force, the report says.

Both countries should tighten the cooperation already being
implemented under the program that has earmarked $1.4 billion in U.S.
funding for Mexico's anti-narcotics efforts, the panel says. The
study by the Binational Task Force on the United States-Mexico also
urges increasing the number of border crossings, making it easier to
get securely through them.

The U.S. members of the panel include former U.S. ambassadors to
Mexico Tony Garza and Jeffrey Davidow, as well as Robert Bonner,
one-time head of both the Drug Enforcement Administration and Customs
and Border Protection.

They were joined by former senior Mexican officials as well as
academics and business leaders from both sides of the border.

"Mexico and the United States have long squandered opportunities for
constructive collaboration along their shared border," the report
states. "The costs have been massive -- billions of dollars in
economic losses, crime and violence, and the widespread sense that
the border is broken or dysfunctional."

Its recommendations come as the Mexican government struggles to
control the country's powerful and well armed crime syndicates.

But the report's suggestions face tough sledding in both
countries.

The Obama administration is focused on health care reform, the
economy and more pressing foreign policy priorities. Getting an
assault weapons ban through Congress is politically next to
impossible, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other
senior U.S. officials have warned in visits to Mexico this year.

And in Mexico, President Felipe Calderon has been struggling to get
budget and economic initiatives through an opposition-controlled
Congress amid the country's worst recession in 80 years.