Gunwalker Scandal Echoes in Mexico. "Both governments still have a lot of explaining to do – and soon."

From EFE News, Mexico: Senators say Mexico acquiescing to U.S. interference

Senators demanded answers from a senior member of Mexican President Felipe Calderon's administration, alleging that his administration is passively accepting U.S. interference in the country's domestic security affairs.

Foreign Secretary Patricia Espinosa appeared Thursday before the Mexican Senate amid harsh criticism of what some call the subordination of the nation's foreign policy to U.S. interests.

The lawmakers mainly grilled Espinosa over "Operation Fast and Furious" - a U.S. law enforcement gambit that purportedly allowed thousands of firearms to be smuggled into Mexico - and the entry of U.S. drones into Mexican airspace as part of joint anti-drug efforts.

Espinosa sought to provide the government's position on those matters but apparently the lawmakers found her arguments unconvincing.

The foreign secretary said the reconnaissance flights were "delineated and controlled" by the Mexican government and that the federal Attorney General's Office has launched an investigation into Operation Fast and Furious with a view to prosecuting any crime that may have been committed in Mexican territory.

The chairperson of the Senate's foreign relations committee, Rosario Green, demanded to know the number of U.S. agents in Mexico, the purpose of their work and the agreements governing their presence in the country. Espinosa did not provide a direct answer to any of the questions.

The New York Times reported this week that the reconnaissance flights, which have been under way since last month, are seeking to provide more information to Mexican authorities about the activities and location of violent drug cartels. . .

Operation Fast and Furious, meanwhile, has already been disavowed by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who said the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' alleged decision to allow assault weapons to enter Mexico as a means of ensnaring criminals was "unacceptable."

The scandal was exposed earlier this month by CBS News in a story that featured ATF agent John Dodson.

Though Washington says Mexico was notified about Operation Fast and Furious, Mexican officials insist they were never told that ATF intended to allow guns across the border.

Had the Mexican government known of the ATF's plan, "it would have flatly rejected it" as "absolutely illegal" under both Mexican and U.S. law, the secretary of Mexico's National Security Council, Alejandro Poire, said Thursday.

From Reuters: "Mexico presses Washington over gun-running dispute."

Mexico has formally asked the United States for information about reports that it had allowed weapons to be sold to suspected Mexican gun-runners, Mexico's foreign minister said on Thursday.

Under sharp criticism from senators in Congress, Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa said the government wanted to know whether hundreds of U.S. weapons had been sold to suspected arms traffickers that were used for crimes in Mexico.

"The media reports about the operation ... have given rise to great concern," Espinosa told a Senate hearing. "For this reason the Mexican government has immediately and formally requested detailed information from the United States."

. . . Mexico's war on drug gangs has claimed the lives of more than 36,000 people since President Felipe Calderon launched his army crackdown in 2006. The fight is straining relations with Washington, which is providing arms and resources to try to crush the drug cartels.

According to the Center for Public Integrity, U.S. federal prosecutors and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives launched "Fast and Furious" in 2009 in an attempt to ensnare leading drug traffickers in Mexico.

The weapons have since been used to commit crimes in Mexico, according to media reports, piling more pressure on Calderon, who has been accused of compromising national sovereignty in his efforts to beat down the cartels.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has asked the Justice Department to investigate the matter, saying the strategy was "unacceptable."

Since Calderon declared war on the drug bosses, the rising tide of violence has eroded support for his conservative National Action Party, which now lags the main opposition group ahead of the 2012 presidential election.

On Wednesday, senior opposition lawmakers accused Calderon of selling out Mexico to the United States when the government admitted it had allowed U.S. spy planes to fly over its territory in search of drug traffickers.

Senators rounded on Espinosa in Congress, accusing the government of handing control of the drugs war to Washington.

"This is an attack on sovereignty, and it's prohibited by the constitution," said Pablo Gomez, a member of the leftist opposition Party of the Democratic Revolution.

The dispute over the gun-running reports could strain ties between Washington and Mexico in the short term, but there is too much at stake for it to do any lasting damage, said Froylan Enciso, an expert on the drugs war based in New York state.

"Both countries have an interest in maintaining stability in relations to protect the massive flows of commerce, capital and labor between the two countries," he said.

And from Britain's left-wing Guardian: "How the ATF's gun-running misfired for Calderon." Rodrigo Camarena writes:

US-Mexican relations, already strained by WikiLeaks, have been further stressed by the scandal of state-sponsored gun-trafficking.

On 3 March, it was revealed that since 2008, the US Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) has allowed thousands of weapons to enter Mexico as part of an undercover operation aimed at uncovering arms trafficking networks in the United States. The operations, dubbed "Fast and Furious", "Project Gunrunner" and "Wide Receiver", infuriated US lawmakers and led to congressional hearings only days later. Testifying before Congress, American officials gave unequivocal positions: US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano denied having previous knowledge of the operations, while Attorney General Eric Holder admitted to knowing of the ATF's gun-tracking tactics, but called cross-border gun-trafficking "not acceptable". Both pledged further investigations.

The response from Mexico's federal government could not have been more different. When initial reports on the "gun-walking" operations arose in late February, the Mexican embassy in the United States seemingly defended ATF's work by reaffirming Mexico's commitment to working with the US in enhancing intelligence and information-sharing, as well as encouraging "more aggressive interdiction efforts on the US side of the border". Once further information on the gun-running scheme was uncovered, and the Mexican public grew more outraged, the Mexican response became more confused. In apparent ignorance of the ATF's tactics across the border, on 5 March, Mexico's ministry of foreign affairs requested detailed information from US authorities on these operations and threatened to pay "special interest" to the department of justice and the ATF's ongoing investigations.

Following Attorney General Holder's testimony before Congress on 10 March, the US embassy in Mexico issued a press release summarising Holder's remarks and declaring that US law enforcement had briefed Mexican counter-trafficking officials as plans unfolded on operations in the United States – in contradiction of Mexico's 5 March statement.

So, who's lying? Apparently, no one. In an effort to resolve the paradox posed by the contradictory statements, the US embassy in Mexico issued yet another press release, a day later, clarifying that Mexico did indeed know of the US side of the sting operations, but had no knowledge of operations that might include the controlled trafficking of arms to Mexican territory. Clarifications aside, suspicion aroused by the conflicting statements has led Mexican legislators to intensify their demands for a detailed explanation by the Caldéron administration of its knowledge and role in these operations.

Nearly two weeks after extensive reports on the gun-walking scandal have come to light, no senior figure in Mexico's federal government has yet denounced the ATF's tactics (including Mexico's president, Felipe Caldéron, who recently found no difficulty in expressing his anger at WikiLeaks revelations about US criticism of his "war on drugs"). While Mexico's bicameral commission on national security begins to speak with federal officials only this week, senior members of the Caldéron government have yet to give a date for their appearances before congress. These include powerful Mexican politicos like the country's minister of the interior, Francisco Blake Mora, and the head of the country's national security council, Alejandro Poiré.

Even as Mexico shakes its fist at the United States and demands detailed explanations, it seems that questions remain to be answered closer to home. Since the ATF's gun-walking operations began in 2008, thousands of firearms were permitted into the hands of Mexico's cartels (over 2,500 weapons in one operation alone). If Mexican authorities knew that the ATF was allowing weapons to "walk" – on a supposedly temporary basis – did they not inquire how many of these were being recovered? If Mexican counter-trafficking officials were being kept up-to-date on the ATF's gun-tracking operations, were they also aware that the ATF knew their weapons were being used in specific shootouts with Mexican and US officials (including the AK-47 that killed US border patrol agent Brian Terry, last December). Was this of concern to them? If ATF agents reported seeing a correlation between their activities and the growing violence in Mexico, how did Mexican security officials not?

Since "Project Gunrunner" began in 2008, over 30,000 cartel-related deaths have been recorded in Mexico. Thus far, the only reported successes from these operations appear to be the arrest of 20 arms traffickers by the ATF this January. Given the immeasurable damage that these operations are likely to have caused, and the little information available on them so far, both governments still have a lot of explaining to do – and soon.