Mexico-U.S. group to address border issues

April 3, 2009 at 12:00a.m.

CUERNAVACA, Mexico (AP) — The U.S. and Mexico are creating a cross-border group to develop strategies for stopping the illegal flow of guns and drugs between the two countries, officials said Thursday.

Emerging from a conference with U.S. officials, Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina-Mora said more meetings are needed to develop plans to bring warring drug cartels under control along the border.

Medina-Mora said Mexico planned to begin checking 10 percent of the vehicles entering the country from the U.S. for illegal weapons and will more closely check outgoing vehicles for drugs and money.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said that, in addition to beefing up border inspections north of the border, “we have to do more to reduce demand for drugs.”

Napolitano and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder met privately for several hours with Medina-Mora and Mexico’s Interior Minister Fernando Gomez-Mont and Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna.

The officials hammered out an agreement that might be signed when U.S. President Barack Obama visits Mexican President Felipe Calderon later this month.

“We want to take advantage of this moment in time,” Napolitano said, referring to the elevated concern on both sides of the border about drug-related killings and kidnappings blamed on the cartels.

Medina-Mora said one point still in negotiation is how to ensure prosecution of anyone violating guns laws, whether they are arrested in Mexico or the United States. In addition, he said, the two countries will create a shared ballistics database to track weapons used in crimes.

Holder said the U.S. is not seeking to change any of its gun laws as part of the effort to curb weapons smuggling.

“I don’t think our Second Amendment will stand in the way of what we have begun,” he said.

Except to say that “too many weapons are flowing from the United States and into Mexico,” Holder did not have a number of how many guns are smuggled across the border.

The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives recently reported that up to 95 percent of guns seized at scenes of drug violence in Mexico can be traced to U.S. commercial sources.

Between 2005 and 2008, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents seized 831 weapons along the southwest border.

Until recently, the U.S. did not regularly inspect southbound vehicles, and the Mexicans didn’t scan the license plates of cars coming into the country. Facilitating legal trade, not catching gun smugglers, was the prime directive, Mexican officials said.

The threat of cartel violence is forcing a new approach. Mexico will begin scanning vehicles for drugs and money and using intelligence to target the right vehicles, Medina-Mora said.