CUTTING OFF CARTELS' SOURCES

U. S., Mexico Launch Effort Targeting Flow of Illegal Weapons

Faced with spiraling drug violence along the border, senior U.S.
officials met with their Mexican counterparts Wednesday and announced
steps to stem the flow of illegal weapons into Mexico.

Officials said that many of the weapons - including powerful handguns
and semiautomatic assault rifles - are purchased legally at shops and
gun shows, and that Houston and Dallas are two of the top sources.
The guns are typically carried south across the border by multiple
couriers whom some officials referred to as an "army of ants."

Even black-market military-style weapons, such as .50-caliber machine
guns, bazookas and grenades, have been seized in raids.

The increasingly sophisticated and powerful weapons pose a risk on
both sides of the border, officials said, but especially in Mexico,
where at least 105 people have been killed in drug-related violence
since 2008 began.

"Drug-trafficking organizations have made life at the border
increasingly dangerous," Michael J. Sullivan, acting director of the
U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said in El
Paso. "And this danger extends across the border and into several
parts of Mexico."

In Mexico City, U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey said the goal
of what officials are calling Project Gunrunner is to dry up the
cartels' arms supply in the U.S. by punishing gun dealers who
knowingly sell weapons to "straw" buyers who then resell them illegally.

"I certainly foresee a tightening-up of the way gun dealers
distribute guns if, in fact, they are selling to straw purchasers,"
Mr. Mukasey said after meeting with his Mexican counterpart, Eduardo
Medina Mora, and Mexican President Felipe Caldersn.

"I see tighter enforcement of regulations requiring that they get
proper identification and that they check these people before they
sell guns, and inevitably we are going to find people who are not
doing what they ought to do, and they will be prosecuted," Mr.
Mukasey said in an interview.

The new measures will also give Mexican law enforcement officials
greater access to the eTrace computer database in the United States,
allowing them to use the serial numbers to trace weapons used in
Mexican crimes to U.S. gun dealers.

The database, currently accessible at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico
City, will be made available to officials at all nine U.S. consulates
in Mexico, beginning with those in Monterrey, Hermosillo and
Guadalajara. A Spanish-language version of the database might also be
created, U.S. officials said.

Under Project Gunrunner, ATF is adding 35 special agents along the
border. The multi-agency El Paso Intelligence Center will receive
three additional ATF agents, for a total of 10, and an additional
investigator, for a total of four. Other agents will be stationed in
Mexico. EPIC will serve as a clearinghouse for ATF operations and
will gather intelligence on the cartels responsible for the violence.

"The weapons we're seeing now is stuff normally used for war," said
one ATF official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "These guys are
armed to the teeth, probably because they have unlimited budgets."

Some of the weapons "can take out an airplane," the official said.
"The Mexican narco has come a long way."

One of the most popular weapons is the FN 57, a Belgian-made handgun
known in Mexico as mata policias - "cop killer" - because the bullets
can penetrate body armor, the official said.

Law enforcement officials have been frequent targets in the latest
wave of violence, a sign that the cartels are responding aggressively
to Mr. Caldersn's campaign against them, authorities say. At least
seven law enforcement officials have been killed this year.

Mr. Caldersn's campaign has deployed hundreds of troops and federal
agents to trouble spots in several states and has especially targeted
the Gulf cartel, based along the Texas border, authorities say.

But the "core infrastructure of the Gulf organization and the Zetas
remains intact," said a U.S. law enforcement official, speaking on
condition of anonymity. The Zetas are the paramilitary enforcement
arm of the Gulf cartel.

"The campaign has instilled fear in narcos who felt they owned the
region," the U.S. official said. "Now they're nervous, looking both
ways, hiding, and that is very positive because any disruption hurts
their business. But we're looking at a protracted war here. There is
no light at the end of the tunnel yet."

Mexican Ambassador Arturo Sarukhan has said that as many as 2,000
weapons enter Mexico from the U.S. each day, most through Texas and
Arizona. The weapons are key in the drug-related bloodshed, which
last year killed more than 2,500 people, a record.

ATF officials said the guns are often bought legally at gun shows and
gun shops throughout Texas, particularly in Houston, because of its
proximity to the border, and Dallas, because of the direct route
along Interstate 35 to Nuevo Laredo.

In a "straw purchase," the weapons are typically bought for drug
traffickers by other people - including friends, relatives and,
increasingly, women - who are legally entitled to own a gun in Texas.
Mexican officials applauded the announcement.

In Mexico City, Mr. Medina Mora acknowledged the spike in drug
violence and compared it to the spate of execution-style killings and
beheadings that peaked in March and April of last year. He called
cartel hit men "cowards" for killing the family members of police
officers, including the wife and 12-year-old daughter of an officer
killed Tuesday in Tijuana.

Mr. Mukasey compared the drug traffickers to terrorists for their
grisly deeds. "It's the same kind of message the terrorists send:
'You will do what we want or else,' " he said.

He said the drug violence is likely to get worse before it gets
better, because the cartels and their paramilitary hit men are now
fighting back against the government crackdown.

The drug traffickers "may very well be now so constrained that they
fell the necessity to hit back the way they are hitting back," he
said. "That's not to say that we are rejoicing in the violence, but
we have no choice but to continue the pressure and to confront them."

The Bush administration will lobby Congress to support the so-called
Merida Initiative, a program of U.S. assistance for anti-drug
operations that would give Mexico $500 million in equipment and
training this year as part of a three-year, $1.4 billion package.

Mr. Mukasey said the administration has a strong argument, given Mr.
Caldersn's unprecedented cooperation with the U.S. in the drug fight
since he took office one year ago.

"Talking about all of the arrests and all of the extraditions and all
of the intelligence that's going back and forth is going to be a
major selling point, and we're going to be beating the drum as loudly
as we can with Congress," Mr. Mukasey said.

He said that Mexican cartels are recruiting members on the U.S. side
of the border and in major U.S. cities, as indicated by the arrests
of Americans during anti-drug operations in Mexico.

"They're recruiting because they can pay," he said.