TOP U.S. OFFICIALS MEET WITH MEXICANS TO QUELL GROWING DRUG-RELATED
BORDER VIOLENCE

CUERNAVACA, Mexico -- The Obama administration's chief law enforcement
officials traveled here on Thursday to meet with their Mexican
counterparts and begin formalizing plans to join forces against the
drug cartels that have unleashed a devastating wave of violence that
threatens to spill over Mexico's northern border.

The details of the agreements were not finished, the officials said,
and they are expected to be announced when President Obama visits
Mexico later this month. But the officials said they were looking at
ways to improve cooperation in investigating and prosecuting gun
smugglers, to upgrade shared fingerprint databases and to increase
inspections of vehicles coming into Mexico.

"There's no doubt that the vast majority of weapons seized in Mexico
come from the United States," said Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.
"This is a reality we have to face in the United States, and it's one
Mexicans have long had to confront. We will take responsibility on our
side to work with Mexico to get a handle on this serious problem."

The meeting, which was attended by Homeland Security Secretary Janet
Napolitano and Mr. Holder, was held on a day when Mexican authorities
announced the arrest of a leader of the powerful Juarez drug cartel as
he was jogging in a park near his home in Mexico City.

The suspect, Vicente Carrillo Leyva, 32, is the son of the cartel's
founder, Amado Carrillo Fuentes, formerly known as the Lord of the
Skies, who died while undergoing plastic surgery 13 years ago.

The authorities said that Mr. Carrillo Leyva controlled many of the
cartel's operations, including transporting heroin, laundering drug
profits and acquiring weapons. His arrest was the second time in two
weeks that the authorities have seized a suspect accused of being part
of the new generation of cartel bosses that the Mexican media has
called "narco-juniors," using the Mexican term for a spoiled rich kid.

A profile of Mr. Carillo Leyva in the Mexican newspaper Universal
reported that his father had hoped to keep him out of the trafficking
business and had sent him to study abroad in Switzerland and Spain.

On March 19, the police arrested Vicente Zambada Niebla, whom they
described as a leader of the Sinaloa Cartel in his 30s.

The arrests are part of a crackdown begun two years ago by Mexican
President Felipe Calderon that ignited a war between law enforcement
and the cartels, as well as among the cartels, which are fighting for
control of lucrative drug routes. Ms. Napolitano and Mr. Holder
acknowledged on Thursday the role played by the United States in the
violence that killed an estimated 6,000 Mexicans last year.

"We want to take advantage of this unique moment when we are all
united on this," Secretary Napolitano said, adding that the cartels
causing violence in Mexico had operations that extended to more than
230 cities across the United States.

For that reason, she said, "it is incumbent on all of us in Mexico and
in the United States" to pursue those who are profiting from the sale
of drugs and who are fomenting so much violence to Mexico.

Attorney General Eduardo Medina-Mora said Mexico, too, would take more
responsibility for stopping the smuggling of weapons into the country.
Mexican customs officials check only about 10 percent of the 230,000
vehicles that cross the border each day, according to the Mexican
attorney general's office.

Mr. Medina said that Mexican customs would spend $1.4 billion to
upgrade infrastructure along the border so that agents could weigh and
inspect more incoming vehicles. He said such inspections had already
begun in Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville, Tex.

Ms. Napolitano, who arrived in Mexico after a stop in San Diego, also
acknowledged that the United States spent scant resources inspecting
outbound vehicles. Officials at the border at San Ysidro, between San
Diego and Tijuana, Mexico -- considered the busiest border crossing in
the world -- said they conducted five southbound inspection operations
last year.

Ms. Napolitano said that would change. She announced that $400 million
in federal stimulus money would be used to increase the number of
customs agents and the amount of equipment devoted to inspecting cars
and trucks heading into Mexico.

Ms. Napolitano and Mr. Holder will meet on Friday with President
Calderon, before Ms. Napolitano leaves for a brief visit with border
officials in Laredo.

"This is a unique time for us," she said at a news conference in San
Diego. "This is a time when the Mexican government at the highest
levels has said enough to the cartels. Working together we can take
them on and take them out."

In a related development on Thursday, in Washington the Senate
approved legislation to authorize an additional $550 million over the
next five years for additional federal agents, investigators and other
resources to help fight the drug cartels that are blamed for the wave
of violence along the border.