PLAN MEXICO

ON TAKING office as Mexico's president last December, Felipe Calderon
made a crackdown against drug gangs his first action. He was prompted
by violence that has seemed to spiral out of control in the past few
years, with hundreds of murders--and severed heads dumped in public
places. He sent the army into nine states, announced a reform of the
police--and began talking to the United States about an aid package.

The details are now close to being finalised. An announcement may
come on August 20th or 21st at a meeting in Quebec between Mr
Calderon, George Bush and Canada's prime minister, Stephen Harper.

Though neither side will be keen to say so, the aid scheme is likely
to bear some resemblance to Plan Colombia, under which the United
States has given aid totalling some $5 billion over the past seven
years. According to Mexico's attorney-general, Eduardo Medina Mora,
discussions were still under way but the aid would be geared to
equipment and training.

Ever since a 19th-century war in which Mexico lost half its territory
to the United States, its politicians have been fiercely touchy about
anything that smacks of foreign intervention. In Colombia several
hundred American troops have acted as trainers and advisers, though
they have not played a direct role in operations. American firms,
working under contract to the State Department, have sprayed coca
fields with weedkiller.

Mr Medina Mora stresses that Mexico will run all crime-fighting
operations on its territory. The government is unlikely to welcome a
visible American presence. So the aid is likely to be concentrated on
improving the mobility and intelligence capabilities of Mexico's
security forces, by providing aircraft, phone-tapping gear and
training in infiltration and surveillance techniques. It may also
include cash to supplement the miserly salaries that make it so easy
for the traffickers to buy off provincial policemen and prosecutors
in the often isolated areas they control.

Any aid is likely to have to be approved by the United States
Congress, now controlled by the Democrats. They have grown
increasingly hostile to Plan Colombia. This has indeed had little
impact on the flow of cocaine to the United States. But it has helped
Colombia's government to retake control of large areas of the country
from guerrillas and paramilitaries.

In recent years Mexico's trafficking gangs have come to control much
of the import of cocaine and methamphetamine by the United States,
and a large chunk of its distribution north of the border. Mexicans
note that their country is paying a high price in violence for the
failure of drug prohibition across the border. Officials also point
out that the Mexican victims of drug violence are often killed with
firearms smuggled in from the United States, where slack gun laws
make automatic weapons easy to obtain.

Mr Calderon is claiming that the crackdown is starting to have an
effect. But a recent lull in the killings may merely be the result of
a peace pact between the two main rival mobs, the Gulf "cartel" and
that from the western state of Sinaloa. They are said to have agreed
on a division of territory. Even if true, that may not end the
violence: 13 drug-related killings were reported in a single day
earlier this month.

Any aid package is bound to attract opposition on both sides of the
border. Human-rights groups question the use of the army for police
work. No amount of aid will improve matters unless Mexico's largely
useless police forces undergo radical reform. But many Mexicans may
reckon that Mr Calderon is right that those who consume the lion's
share of the traffickers' product should help to pay for dealing with
their mayhem.