Mexico Under Siege

HILLARY CLINTON WRAPS UP MEXICO VISIT, CALLS DRUG VIOLENCE 'INTOLERABLE'

The Secretary of State Tours a High-Tech Police Facility in Mexico
City and Meets With University Students in Monterrey.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, ending a two-day visit
to Mexico that centered heavily on the drug war, toured a
state-of-the-art police center and condemned drug violence in a
meeting with university students Thursday.

"This situation is intolerable for honest, law-abiding citizens of
Mexico, my country or of anywhere people of conscience live," Clinton
told the students in Monterrey, a business hub 120 miles south of the
U.S. border.

Bilateral matters stretch far beyond crime, Clinton said, and she
mentioned economic and family ties, trade, energy and the world's
financial meltdown. But the conversation kept returning to the drug
war, which has killed more than 7,000 people in Mexico since the
beginning of 2008.

Clinton said again that the battle against Mexican drug traffickers
was a shared burden between Mexico and the United States. On
Wednesday, she bluntly acknowledged that the United States bears some
blame for the crisis because of its "insatiable" appetite for illicit
drugs and its role as a supplier of weapons that are smuggled into
Mexico to arm the cartels' hit men.

Clinton hoped during her stay to soothe Mexican leaders stung by
commentary in the U.S. suggesting that Mexico is losing ground to the
cartels.

President Felipe Calderon's government applauded an Obama
administration plan, announced Tuesday, that will target the cartels
by placing more U.S. agents and other personnel along the border. And
the news media and Mexican politicians lauded Clinton's frank
declaration of blame as long overdue.

Clinton began Thursday by touring the high-tech federal police base in
Mexico City, accompanied by the nation's public safety chief, Genaro
Garcia Luna. The facility, boasting a command center linked by live
video to police stations around Mexico, is a centerpiece of the
Calderon administration's effort to revamp the police forces, part of
his 2-year-old campaign against drug traffickers.

Clinton then flew to Monterrey, Mexico's bustling financial capital.
Drug-related violence has soared in the city and the surrounding state
of Nuevo Leon. In recent months, attackers have thrown grenades at the
U.S. Consulate and a Mexican television station in Monterrey, though
no one was injured.

This week, Mexican officials announced the arrest of Monterrey-based
Hector Huerta Rios, one of the country's 37 most-wanted drug suspects.

Huerta allegedly ran operations in Monterrey for the Beltran Leyva
trafficking ring, based in the northwestern state of Sinaloa, and
served as the group's liaison with the so-called Gulf cartel, in the
country's northeast.