MEXICAN AMBASSADOR SAYS CARTELS' RISK TO U.S. NOT JUST A BORDER ISSUE

MEXICO CITY - Mexico is facing a strong and growing threat from
transnational criminal organizations, leaving the U.S. little choice
but to assist its southern neighbor or risk an increasingly grave
threat to its own security, U.S. Ambassador Carlos Pascual said Friday.

In an interview with The Dallas Morning News, Pascual warned that the
security implications for the U.S. go far beyond its cities bordering
Mexico.

"The big challenge here isn't just the challenge of the U.S. border
cities, but the linkages between hundreds of cities across the United
States and Mexican cartels, and that is what we have to interrupt and
block," he said.

"So the more we work with Mexico to combat the infiltration of
organized crime - drug-trafficking organizations here [in Mexico] -
the more it will help us in our efforts in the United States."

Those cities include Dallas, which has emerged as a strategic hub for
not just the notorious paramilitary group known as the Zetas, but also
for the deadly and fast-expanding cartel known as La Familia, a
drug-trafficking organization and methamphetamine supplier based in
the central Mexican state of Michoacán.

In October, at least 84 people were arrested in the Dallas area,
nearly a third of the 300 arrested nationwide under Operation
Coronado, which targeted La Familia operations in the United States.

A violent week

Pascual's remarks were made as another violent week unfolded in
Mexico, with a series of grenade attacks in the northern state of
Sonora, resulting in only minor injuries, and dozens more killings in
Ciudad Juárez, a city on the border with Texas that has become the
deadliest in Mexico.

So far this year, more than 7,100 people have been killed nationwide
as a result of drug violence. One senior U.S. law enforcement
official, speaking on condition of anonymity, warned that the violence
could increase in the coming days as cartel members "desperately want
to finish their pending jobs before they take a hiatus for Christmas."

In the interview, Pascual also outlined Obama administration
initiatives to assist Mexico, and he disputed a recent government
report that suggested U.S. aid was too slow in arriving in Mexico.

The United States is providing $1.4 billion in assistance to Mexico
under the Mérida Initiative to combat criminal groups, which now
control or wield influence in more than 40 percent of Mexican
territory, according to experts at El Colegio de La Frontera in Baja
California.

The Mérida Initiative, a three-year program begun under the Bush
administration, will continue under President Barack Obama but evolve
in strategy, Pascual said. The plan is to move from simply hunting
"high-value targets" to attacking cartel organizations as
corporations, he said. This will be done by "studying their markets,"
how they use and move cash, how they produce and distribute their
product, "and how best to intervene."

Working together

Both sides are working on ways to best use new equipment, training and
intelligence-sharing in joint operations, such as one that recently
led to the discovery of an illegal tunnel between San Diego and
Tijuana. Another joint operation will soon begin in the Juárez-El Paso
region, Pascual said.

Pascual added that new strategies will include training some of the
400,000 state and municipal police in Mexico and strengthening the
rule of law, in part by revising course outlines at law schools across
Mexico.

Pascual said the U.S. is continuing to assist the Mexican government
in generating more jobs, including the rezoning of neighborhoods to
help build "more resilient communities" and take away the social base
from which cartels can recruit teens as hit men or drug pushers.

"If you have major areas for bars and strip bars, the likelihood that
you will have illegal activities is quite high," he said.

A recent report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office
criticized the slow pace at which the U.S. aid was reaching Mexico. As
of Sept. 30, it said, only $26 million of the $1.2 billion designated
for Mexico had been spent.

Defending aid delivery

Pascual took issue with the report, saying that $359 million, or
nearly a third of the $1.2 billion U.S. package to Mexico, was "in
process," including the delivery of five Bell 412 helicopters, valued
at $66 million, expected to be introduced Tuesday at a ceremony in
Mexico City.

The GAO figure "isn't a very good reflection of what is in
implementation," Pascual said.

Despite the bleak outlook in Mexico, Pascual said he sees hope, in
part because Mexican society is waking up to a stark, troubled reality
and taking action. He listed a plethora of new nongovernmental
organizations that realize that the growing power of criminal groups
"is no longer just a border issue."

"And as that understanding penetrates into society and into political
life, I think we're seeing a greater, growing consensus that there
must be a fight not just from the state, but from the bottom up, and
that's healthy."