By IANS
Mexico City : The visiting US Attorney General Michael Mukasey has praised the success of the Project Gunrunner that aims to reduce the flow of illegal weapons from the US into Mexico, EFE news agency reported Thursday.
The US justice department plans to deploy “additional resources to arrest and prosecute violent criminals, and trace the firearms used by criminal gangs in Mexico and the US”, Mukasey said at a joint press conference Wednesday with Mexican counterpart Eduardo Medina Mora.
Mukasey said Mexico would be able to benefit from the “E-trace” technology to track down the sources of the weapons like assault rifles, heavy-calibre machine guns and grenade launchers used by the country’s powerful drug cartels.
The ultimate aim of Project Gunrunner, he said, is to put the criminals out of business and prosecute the US gun dealers found to be supplying the organised-crime elements blamed for more than 2,700 murders in Mexico last year.
“Our two countries have seen too much violence committed by criminals who exploit our border,” Mukasey said. “I know that neither of us can solve this problem individually.”
The recently published 2008 Almanac estimates that 4.3 million guns entered Mexico during the 2000-2006 term of President Vicente Fox.
Medina Mora told reporters at the joint press conference that he and Mukasey had also discussed money laundering, the illegal drug trade and migrant smuggling.
He said the two neighbours agreed to “give greater impetus” to the Oasis Programme, which he described as an effort to protect undocumented immigrants while prosecuting the smugglers, known as “coyotes”.
Mexico is the origin of most of the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants living in the US, whose remittances constitute this country’s No 2 source of revenue after oil exports.
Prior to the press event Mukasey met Mexican President Felipe Calderon, conveying to him the Bush administration’s acknowledgement of his government’s offensive against organised crime.
When asked by a reporter whether this year’s US presidential campaign would make it harder for President Bush to get Congress to approve $550 million in law-enforcement assistance to Mexico, Mukasey said he saw “no reason” why the election process should interfere with the aid package.
The $550 million is part of the Merida Initiative, named for the Mexican resort city where Bush and Calderon met last year, which envisions providing Mexico with as much as $1.4 billion in aid to battle drug cartels.
Bush has sent to Congress a bill authorising the initial amount, but lawmakers appear in no hurry to take up the matter.