Mexican Leader Visits Obama Amid Tension
By GINGER THOMPSON
WASHINGTON — President Obama and his Mexican counterpart will meet Thursday in an effort to repair damaged relations and tamp down a diplomatic blame game over the violent drug wars raging south of the border.President Felipe Calderón of Mexico is to spend the morning at the White House, and in a joint news conference the two leaders may signal whether they were able to overcome the chill that has taken hold in their once warm relations and take any concrete steps toward renewing their common fight against drug trafficking organizations.
The talks come more than two weeks after an American law enforcement agent was gunned down by suspected drug traffickers on a busy Mexican highway. The attack reinforced a sense among Mexicans that their government was losing the war against drugs. And it reminded Americans that this was their fight, too.
But there has been as much tension as cohesion across the border, with the United States raising questions about whether Mexico was too weak and corrupt to stand against organized crime, and Mexico accusing the United States of failing to accept responsibility — in deeds, as much as words — for its share of the problem.
“Mexico wants the United States to act with more urgency,” said Rafael Fernández de Castro, who last week left his post as an adviser to Mr. Calderón to return to academia. “And Washington wants Mexico to show more results.”
Until recently, the two governments publicly appeared to be the strongest of allies. Mr. Calderón was the first head of state that Mr. Obama received after he was elected. The two leaders have met at least five times, including two trips Mr. Obama took to Mexico in 2009 and Mr. Calderón’s state visit to Washington last May. A couple months before that, in an unprecedented display of American support for its southern neighbor, several of Mr. Obama’s highest-ranking cabinet members met in Mexico City with their Mexican counterparts to work on strategies for cooperating in the fight against drug trafficking organizations.
Those expressions of goodwill, and increased cooperation among agencies, however, didn’t add up to much on the ground. More than 34,000 Mexicans have been killed in drug-related violence in the four years since Mr. Calderón took office and dispatched his military to take down the traffickers.
Mr. Obama and Mr. Calderón have seemed undaunted, saying the violence was to be expected and was a sign that the well-armed and well-financed traffickers were in disarray as a result of the government offensive.
“This is a generational battle. It’s going to take time,” said Ambassador Arturo Sarukhan, the Mexican envoy to Washington. “Whoever thought this was going to be easy is smoking too much of the stuff we’re seizing.”
Then, at the end of last year, the diplomatic harmony was shattered when secret State Department cables released by WikiLeaks presented a picture of such intense rivalry among Mexico’s civilian law enforcement agencies and its military that little gets done. Mr. Calderón shot back last week, telling a Mexican newspaper that the cables showed the “ignorance” of American diplomats, and accusing United States law enforcement agencies of tripping over one another.
Add to that, both Mexico and the United States will have presidential elections next year. Mr. Obama is counting on the Latino vote — which is predominantly Mexican. And even though Mr. Calderón cannot run for another term, the way he handles relations with the United States will almost certainly affect his party’s chances.
Andrew Selee, director of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said with Mexico and the United States deeply dependent on each other for things like trade, immigration and security, the diplomatic tensions threatened to overshadow the need to work together day to day.
Mr. Selee said not to expect any bold new initiatives to be announced during Mr. Calderón’s visit. Officials in both governments will consider the trip a success if they can put things back to where they were before WikiLeaks.
“The relationship is working well at an operational level,” Mr. Selee said. “But the presidents need to get the political dialogue back on track, because this griping can get in the way of everything else.”
Mr. Obama is expected to reiterate his confidence in Mr. Calderón, and promise to make good on the $1.4 billion the United States committed to Mexico’s counternarcotics efforts under a policy called the Merida Initiative.
Whether that’s going to be good enough for the openly miffed Mr. Calderón remains to be seen. Political observers said they would be listening to Mr. Calderón’s comments and watching his body language for cues.
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