US military chief to offer help to Mexico in violent drug war

US military chief to offer help to Mexico in violent drug war

America’s top military officer heads to Mexico this week to offer help to a government battling powerful drug cartels, amid alarm in Washington over escalating violence across the border.

With the death toll at 5,300 last year and Mexican cartels armed with automatic weapons and billions in cash, the crisis has become a full-blown national security concern for the United States.

Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was due in Mexico later this week as the United States signalled it was ready to step up military and other assistance to tackle the heavily armed drug rings ravaging the country’s north.

"The cartels are retaliating," Defense Secretary Robert Gates told NBC on Sunday. "It clearly is a serious problem."

But he said Mexico has dropped its traditional reluctance to cultivate ties with the US military.

"I think we are beginning to be in a position to help the Mexicans more than we have in the past," Gates said. "Some of the old biases against cooperation between our militaries and so on, I think, are being satisfied."

The United States started sharing intelligence with Mexico in November and under a new program plans to provide helicopters, maritime surveillance aircraft and other equipment, Pentagon spokesman Commander Jeffrey Gordon said.

Mullen, who visited Brazil on Monday as part of a week-long Latin American tour that includes stops in Chile, Peru and Colombia, said last week the United States was "looking for ways to assist" the Mexican government.

"Clearly one of the things he expects to talk to his counterparts in Mexico and other officials about is the growing violence and growing threat with regard to narco-trafficking and the drug cartels," Captain John Kirby, spokesman for Mullen, told AFP.

"We would welcome the opportunity to increase and enhance our military-to-military cooperation," Kirby said by phone after Mullen’s visit to Brazil. "There’s clearly room to do more."

The two countries have been cooperating for some time, but last year the effort intensified with the US Merida Initiative that gives Mexico 1.4 billion dollars over three years and 200 million to Central America and the Caribbean.

The initiative has nabbed some top drug barons and shipments, but the cartels remain defiant. In Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, they have threatened to decapitate the mayor and his entire family.

Experts say military cooperation will not be enough and that corruption in Mexico as well as growing demand for drugs on the US side of the border feed the scourge.

Both governments have blamed the other for failing to take action.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon took offense at a State Department report last week that said pervasive corruption was hampering the drug war. He said it was time Washington stopped the flow of guns and drug money into Mexico.

"I think that weapons and cash cross from there to here, and that both countries should strive to make their border safe and open to trade and workers, but closed to illegal drugs, weapons and money trafficking," he said.

Mexican and US authorities have traced over 90 percent of the guns used by the cartels to American gun shops and shows, even though US laws forbid foreign nationals from buying fire arms.

And an estimated 15 to 20 billion dollars passes across the US border to the drug barons each year, US analysts say.

Mullen in a speech last month cited years of US assistance to Colombia, with military aid only one element, as a successful model for tackling drug cartels.

"I think the Colombian example is a great example of a very broad program that was not just military to support a friend at a time when, effectively, they were very close to a failed state," Mullen said at Princeton on February 5.

The admiral said similar support could help Mexico.

"We?ve offered