MEXICO CITY (AFP) — The United States gave its go ahead Wednesday to a 197-million-dollar, anti-crime and -drug trafficking program for Mexico, said US Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza.
The Merida Initiative, which US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gave a national security priority, totals 1.6 billion dollars in aid over three years for Mexico, Central American and Caribbean nations to deal with organized crime in their regions.
It will boost regional anti-crime efforts with additional helicopters, surveillance aircraft and weapons systems.
"This letter of agreement we have signed frees up 197 million dollars of the 400 million the US Congress approved from its supplementary funds for fiscal 2008," Garza said after signing the document with undersecretary for North America Carlos Rico.
The ambassador said more than 136 million dollars are being funneled through "military cooperation and economic support funds," adding that another 43 million dollars will be freed up "once internal reporting requirements are met."
He said 24 million dollars would cover Merida Initiative administration fees.
First announced in October 2007, the initiative was approved in June by the US Congress.
Rice, during a visit to Mexico in October, said the Merida Initiative was "a national security priority for Mexico and ... for the United States ... We consider it to be an initiative for which there is urgency."
"Mexico faces unprecedented difficulties in terms of crime and the links between crime and drugs, and obviously that has -- given our long, shared border -- significant implications for the United States as well," Rice said before she met with Mexicn President Felipe Calderon.
Since December 2006, Mexico has deployed 36,000 military troops and thousands of police around the country in an operation aimed at clamping down on organized crime.
Despite the show of force, more than 4,500 people have been killed this year, 1,500 of them in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from the US state of Texas, and 685 in Tijuana, across from San Diego, California.
The two northern cities are where most illegal drug shipments flow into the United States, the world's top consumer of around 950 tons of cocaine processed almost exclusively each year in Latin America.
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