U.S. CABINET OFFICIALS TO MEET WITH MEXICAN COUNTERPARTS

By GARY MARTIN

and STEWART M.

POWELL

New York Times



WASHINGTON – U.S. law enforcement officials and their Mexican counterparts will huddle in Central Mexico on Thursday to seek ways to stifle arms smuggling from the U.S to Mexico.

Days after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that Americans shared responsibility for drug-fueled violence in Mexico, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder will fly to Cuernavaca in an effort to develop support for improved gun screening at ports of entry along the southwest U.S. border.

Napolitano, who will visit border crossings in San Diego on Wednesday and Laredo, Texas, on Friday, said integrating security systems at border crossings "will help us better detect whether arms are being taken illegally into Mexico."

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said Napolitano’s visit to Laredo’s World Trade Bridge indicates she is "willing to work with Texas lawmakers to tackle the challenges along our border head on."

Border sheriffs, meanwhile, are pressing Congress for more money – $500 million more each year for the next five years – to enforce law and order along an increasingly lawless border.

"Our border is wide open; it is very porous and definitely unprotected and vulnerable," Zapata County Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez, the leader of the Southwest Border Sheriffs’ Coalition, told a congressional panel Tuesday. "We are fed up and tired of failed policies and promises."

The spending request would go to U.S. law enforcement agencies – unlike the $1.4 billion Congress is sending to Mexico under the Bush administration’s Merida Initiative aimed at fighting Mexican drug cartels, corruption and violence.

Napolitano and Holder will meet with Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora Icaza and Mexican Interior Minister Fernando Francisco Gomez-Mont Urueta at an arms-trafficking conference in Cuernavaca, about 50 miles of Mexico City.

The visit by the two Cabinet members comes as drug cartel violence has claimed more than 7,000 lives over the last 15 months.

Holder said he would continue the fight with "our Mexican counterparts against these violent criminal enterprises."

The meeting comes in advance of President Obama’s mid-April summit with Mexican President Felipe Calderon.

Last week, Napolitano unveiled the Obama administration’s strategy to crack down on smuggling, sending 500 new federal agents to the U.S.-Mexico border and eventually $700 million in aid ...