U.S. Obligations under the Merida Initiative

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Chairman Engel, Ranking Member Burton and Members of the Subcommittee:

Thank you for the opportunity to appear before this Committee and address the important connections between the Merida Initiative and ongoing domestic efforts to fight organized crime and drug trafficking.

As you will recall, on November 14, 2007 I testified before this committee on the Merida Initiative. At that time, I described the specific aspects of the Merida Initiative as a foreign assistance program. I highlighted the important role played by President Bush’s March 2007 visit to Latin America in developing the Merida Initiative, and noted the concern expressed by then-President Berger in Guatemala and President Calderon in Mexico about the threat which democratic states faced from organized crime, gangs and narcotics cartels. In Merida, Mexico President Bush said we “recognize the United States has a responsibility in the fight against drugs,” including the responsibility to reduce the demand for drugs in the United States. In Montebello, Canada in August of 2007, President Bush spoke of “a common strategy to deal with [the] common problem” of “narco-trafficking and violence on our border.”

Presidents Bush and the leaders of Central America and Mexico agree that transnational crime is a regional problem, which will require regional solutions. To that end, the Merida Initiative would combine each nation’s domestic efforts with broader regional cooperation to multiply the effects of our actions. The Administration is committed to doing everything possible to stem the flow of arms and laundered money to Mexico and Central America, where they do so much harm, either in the form of violence or corruption.

Our countries’ individual and cooperative strategies reflect a consensus about the threats we face and the political will to take action to address those threats. We in the United States have strong domestic initiatives in the National Southwest Border Counternarcotics Strategy, ATF’s Southwest Border Initiative, and our coordinated anti-gang activities. Each demands vigorous efforts within our own borders, but also includes elements of international cooperation that we must coordinate with our partners. The Merida Initiative is a foreign assistance program that provides some of the needed material resources to facilitate that coordinated action.

The effects of drug trafficking activity are clear in Mexico, along the borders, in the United States and in Central America. Just in the month of January, we have seen police chiefs and their families gunned down just across our border in Mexico: two precinct commanders and one sub-commander in Tijuana on January 15; a Ciudad Juarez police captain on January 20. The Ciudad Juarez police commander, injured in an assassination attempt on January 21, remains in an El Paso hospital under heavy guard. Three of ten men arrested for their involvement in a deadly shooting in Rio Bravo, Mexico were U.S. citizens, two of whom were from Detroit, Michigan. We can no longer just warn of this violence spilling over into the United States, we must acknowledge that it has. And our children are affected by gang violence in high schools even in the Washington, DC area, and ever more lethal and novel drugs deep in the interior of the United States.

President Bush has noted our “shared responsibility” to combat transnational crime. The illicit trafficking of arms is a major obstacle to security and economic development in Mexico and Central America. Throughout the hemisphere, terrorists groups, insurgents, and drug traffickers acquire arms through illegal diversion, theft and smuggling. My colleagues will tell you of the United States’ efforts to mitigate the illicit trafficking and destabilizing accumulation of arms by means of law enforcement cooperation, bilateral technical and financial assistance, and multilateral diplomacy.

In your invitation letter, you inquired about the Inter-American Convention against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives, and other Related Materials (CIFTA). CIFTA seeks to regulate the legal manufacture and trafficking of firearms, ammunition explosive and other related materials and criminalize acts of illicit manufacturing and trafficking. Department of State programs and regulations comply with the primary obligations required under the CIFTA.

Our domestic law enforcement efforts to reduce demand, and control arms and cash flows going south will help cut off the oxygen which, along with fear and intimidation, sustain these criminal organizations

The Merida Initiative is a foreign assistance program that would complement existing and planned initiatives of U.S. domestic law enforcement agencies engaged with counterparts in each participating country. The key is strengthening institutions and capacity in our partner countries so that we can do more things jointly, responding with greater agility, confidence, and speed to the changing tactics of organized crime.

Representatives of those domestic agencies are here today to tell you about their domestic initiatives that complement what we seek to achieve through the Merida Initiative and their on-going cooperation with our partners in Mexico and Central America.

Thank you for your time and I would be happy to answer any questions you may have.