mexico News- Mar. 18

Posted by the Generals on March 21, 2011, 12:40 pm
187.146.128.251

Subject: Mexico News DAILY March 18, 2011 LatinNews Daily - 18 March 2011 Mexican senate criticises US policy Development: On 17 March senators from all parties, including the ruling Partido Acción Nacional (PAN), criticised the Mexican government’s policy towards the US. Significance: The Mexican senate’s unhappiness with what the US has been doing in and over Mexico bodes ill for US attempts to allow its officials to bear weapons in Mexico and for the Mexican suspect of a murder of a US Immigration & Customs Enforcement agent to be extradited to face a death-penalty trial in US. Admittedly, Mexico yesterday did extradite a national, Emilio Samyn Gonzáles Arenazas, to California, where he faces prosecution for the murder of a US Border Patrol agent in 2009. California, however, has a ‘de facto’ suspension of executions. Key points: • Mexican senators from all parties were questioning the foreign minister, Patricia Espinosa, over recent US operations in Mexico. The two most notable are: ‘Fast & Furious’, in which the US deliberately allowed Mexican gangs to equip themselves with supposedly tracked assault rifles, and the use of US drones in Mexican airspace. A former foreign minister, Rosario Green, from the country’s biggest party, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), said that never had a Mexican government handed over so much for so little and with such poor results. She said that Mexico’s foreign policy was in a critical situation with the government concealing information and making dangerous miscalculations in a confrontation with the US over the US ambassador to Mexico, Carlos Pascual. • Green added that it was “unacceptable” for the Mexican government to rely on “investigations on the other side of the border” over both ‘Fast & Furious’ and the use of drones. • On 18 March, a Republican congressman from Texas, Michael McCaul, who chairs a Homeland Security subcommittee on oversight, investigations & management, announced a 31 March hearing on “The US Homeland Security Role in the Mexican War Against Drug Cartels” to consider “the failed” ‘Fast & Furious’ operation. The US Justice Department’s preliminary report on ‘Fast & Furious’ is due to go to the House’s committee on the judiciary today (18 March).

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