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Third Mexican mayor in month slain by hitmen
 for a map, click here.[Pak Daily Times] The third Mexican mayor in a month was slain by suspected drug gang men on the same day the US secretary of state raised hackles in Mexico by saying the country is "looking more and more like Colombia looked 20 years ago." Hillary Rodham Clinton and other US officials pointed to Mexican drug cartels' use of three car bombs, a tool once favoured by cartel-allied rebels in Colombia, as evidence that the gangs "are now showing more and more indices of insurgency." While the Mexican government quickly condemned the killing of the mayor of the northern town of El Naranjo, it rejected the comparison with Colombia, where the Medellin drug cartel waged a full frontal assault on the state, endangering its very integrity with attacks on police, politicians and judges and terror attacks against civilians. More worrisome to Mexican legislators, Clinton suggested the United States was looking to implement some type of Plan Colombia for Mexico and Central America, referring to a US anti-drug program in which American special forces teams trained Colombian troops and US advisers are attached to Colombian military units. The reaction was swift. Mexico which has suffered at least three US invasions has always rejected allowing American troops on its soil, except for a single symbolic presence: Mexico's Senate has authorised a US detachment to march in next week's Bicentennial parade. "Starting right now, we have to say this clearly. We are not going to permit any version of a Plan Colombia," said Sen Santiago Creel, a member of President Felipe Calderon's National Action Party. "We cannot permit a Plan Colombia in Mexico." Sen Ricardo Monreal of the leftist Labor Party said US aid to Colombia hadn't stopped drug trafficking there. "Whoever thinks Colombia is a cure-all, and if the United States thinks it is necessary to apply the same model to us they applied to Colombia, they are mistaken," he said. Plan Colombia has been widely credited for helping Colombia diminish the rebel threat, but critics say it has not put a significant dent in the drug trade. Clinton made her statements Wednesday in Washington at the Council on Foreign Relations, where she said drug cartels are "morphing into, or making common cause with, what we would consider an insurgency in Mexico and in Central America." Clinton also suggested that "we need to figure out what are the equivalents" for Mexico and Central America of Plan Colombia, acknowledging "there were problems and there were mistakes, but it worked." Mexican cartels are becoming increasingly violent federal police reported Wednesday they had found four bodies in a clandestine grave linked to arrested US-born drug hitman Edgar Valdez Villarreal, alias "La Barbie" and are carrying out more attacks on government officials in Mexico. Hooded gunmen burst into Mayor Alexander Lopez Garcia's office in the northern Mexico state of San Luis Potosi on Wednesday and shot him to death. President Felipe Calderon's office issued a statement condemning the killing the third mayor slain in less than a month calling it a "cowardly and criminal" act. There was no immediate information on the motive in the attack, but the style of the slaying resembles methods used by Mexico's drug cartels. Posted by: Fred 2010-09-10 |
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