CUERNAVACA, Mexico – 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.
Medina-Mora said the new vehicle-inspection measures were part of Mexico's overall $1.4 billion modernization of border customs and crossing points. The first such vehicle checks are already being carried out in Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville, Texas.
Medina-Mora also said there had about 1,600 drug-related killings in Mexico in the first quarter of 2009, about 25 percent less than the last quarter of 2008. He did not give a reason for the decline, but the government says violence has decreased in border cities like Ciudad Juarez after thousands of additional army troops were sent there earlier this year.
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.
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