MEXICO AND U.S. PLOT NEW ANTIDRUG STRATEGY

Merida Initiative Offers $1.3 Billion for Equipment, Training, 'Smart'
Border Enforcement and Institutional Reform

MEXICO CITY-U.S. and Mexican officials are expected to finalize a new
strategy on Tuesday on how to use some $1.3 billion in U.S. aid under
the so-called Merida Initiative to try to control growing drug-related
violence in Mexico. Officials hope the plan, which mixes military aid
such as Black Hawk helicopters with "softer" money such as investments
in local communities, can have the same success in turning around
Mexico's troubles as Plan Colombia, another U.S. antidrug aid package,
did for that country. Officials caution that solving Mexico's problems
could be a tougher battle than helping Colombia, where U.S. aid helped
the government beat back insurgencies tied to the drugs trade.

"Mexico is nowhere near as bad as Colombia was at the height of its
problems. But to get Mexico to where Colombia is now will require a
concerted and sustained effort," said one U.S. official. To stress the
U.S. commitment to Mexico, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will
visit the country on Tuesday along with an unusually large U.S.
delegation that includes Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Homeland
Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

The visit is aimed at supporting Mexican President Felipe Calderon and
the country's struggle against the drug gangs responsible for some
18,000 murders in the past three years. It also comes less than two
weeks after the brutal murders of three people tied to the U.S.
consulate in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, including an American couple.

The killings raised awareness of the deepening battle on the U.S.
doorstep, and underscored how the violence continues to grow despite
U.S. aid and the deployment of some 45,000 troops by Mr. Calderon to
contain vicious feuds between rival drug gangs.

Underscoring the challenge faced by both countries, the bodies of two
missing police officers were found early Monday morning outside police
headquarters in the capital of the southern state of Guerrero,
law-enforcement officials said, according to the Associated Press. In
the nearby resort of Acapulco, police later Monday found two mutilated
bodies and a threatening message outside the house of the city's
former deputy traffic-police chief.

The Merida Initiative, which began under the administration of George
W. Bush, is a three-year aid plan that is likely to be extended. While
it has been under way since 2008, the money has been slow in coming-as
has the broader plan for how to use it.

The strategy will focus on four areas: helping disrupt drug gangs
through better equipment, training and technology; helping create
stronger institutions for the rule of law; creating a "smart" border
that stops drugs, guns and drug money but allows commerce to continue;
and trying to address the underlying problems that fuel drug violence,
such as a lack of job creation.

"The strategy sounds good. The question is can both sides implement
it," said Andrew Selee, director of the Mexico Institute at the
Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington.

Mexico, Mr. Selee said, will have to force disparate agencies like the
military and police to work together. Washington will have to keep a
sustained focus on Mexico that has proved hard to maintain in the
past, he added. In fact, only $128 million of the Merida money has
been delivered to Mexico, leading to criticism from some analysts that
Washington is moving too slowly to help its beleaguered neighbor. But
U.S. officials point out that U.S. antidrug assistance to Mexico used
to be roughly $25 million a year before the 2008 Merida plan, making
such a ramp-up in aid hard to pull off faster. Officials on both sides
of the border say cooperation has never been better. Mrs. Clinton,
like President Barack Obama, is expected to stress that U.S. demand
for drugs is what drives the violence in Mexico. That kind of
rhetorical support for Mexico has allowed the U.S. to operate much
more closely with Mexican officials, including having U.S. instructors
at Mexico's top police academy.

Officials say the new Merida strategy partly comes from lessons
learned in Colombia, where billions of U.S. aid under Plan Colombia
and direct U.S. military training helped turn the tide.

"We're beginning further down the curve here than in Colombia, which
also had a much more noxious mix of insurgencies and drugs," said the
U.S. official. But Mexico could prove more difficult to help than
Colombia, partly because Mexico, with a population of more than 110
million, is much bigger than Colombia, a nation of 45 million. Another
complicating factor: Colombia is a centralized country and Mexico is a
federal republic, making action much more difficult to coordinate and
slower to implement. Colombia has a national police force, while
Mexico has more than 1,300 local, state and federal law enforcement
bodies.

Both Mexico and the U.S. also remain hamstrung in dealing with the
drug problem by internal political factors, according to Peter Hakim,
president of Inter-American Dialogue, a think tank in Washington.
Mexican nationalism prevents the kind of direct U.S. military training
and deployment that helped Colombia turn the tide in its fight against
guerrilla groups there, he said, while the U.S. culture of loose gun
laws, for instance, makes it harder to slow the flow of guns to Mexico
that end up in the hands of cartels.