On his first visit to Mexico, he agrees with President Felipe Calderon to also cooperate on energy, the environment and immigration. Obama now moves on to the Latin American summit.
By Peter Nicholas and Tracy Wilkinson
3:16 PM PDT, April 16, 2009
Reporting from Mexico City -- President Obama, in his first official trip to Mexico, said he will push for U.S. ratification of a treaty designed to lessen the flow of weapons to drug cartels and announced that the countries will work together on a host of issues including the environment and energy.
Speaking at a joint news conference with Mexico President Felipe Calderon, Obama said the arms trafficking treaty was needed as part "of the battle against drug cartels that are robbing so many of a future."
The presidents also announced the formation of the U.S.-Mexico Bilateral Framework on Clean Energy and Climate Change, a mechanism to stimulate political and technical cooperation between the countries. And they said they would work together on other issues, including immigration.
"On many of the other thorny topics of relations between U.S. and Mexico, we have had an open, frank and trusting conversation between President Obama and myself," Calderon said at the news conference.
Obama and Calderon met this afternoon after Obama arrived here on the first leg of his Latin America debut. Obama will spend less than 24 hours in Mexico before continuing Friday to Trinidad and Tobago for the fifth Summit of the Americas, a three-day meeting of the hemisphere's 34 elected heads of state and government. U.S.-Latin American relations are at their lowest point in years.
The Obama administration had already said it will increase enforcement of existing laws to try to stop the smuggling of weapons across the border. Today's announcement is a further step in the battle against the cartels.
The Inter-American Convention Against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives and Other Related Items better known by its Spanish acronym, CIFTA, was adopted in 1997 and went to the U.S. Senate in 1998. The United States is one of four nations in the Western Hemisphere that have not ratified the convention, though the U.S. has sought to abide by the treaty's spirit.
President Obama arrived in an embattled Mexico, where he faced a test of his ability to bring fundamental change to one of Washington's most important relationships.
Obama stepped off of Air Force One at about 1:30 p.m. local time and was greeted by Foreign Secretary Patricia Espinosa. He was then taken by helicopter to confer with Calderon.
At the formal welcoming ceremony, Calderon called for a new era of understanding and cooperation.
"We are, we can and we should be friends, partners and allies," Calderon said. "Mr. President, let's start a new era of relations between the United States and Mexico, . . . new era in which we work together to make our border an example of productivity and security . . . a new era in which the fight against organized crime is waged completely as a shared responsibility, a battle waged by both Mexicans and Americans and won as allies."
Then adapting Obama's slogan from the presidential campaign, Mexico's president added in English: "Let's build a new era. Yes we can."
Obama was equally gracious thanking Calderon for the welcome.
"There's a reason why the first visit I had with a president was with President Calderon," Obama said. "We are joined by a border but our bonds are so much more than that."
Obama arrived at 2:09 p.m. for the formal welcoming ceremony in a park on the grounds of Los Pinos, Mexico's equivalent of the White House. A podium was set up at the foot of a large statue of Francisco I. Madero, who served as Mexican president in the early 20th century.
Children wearing school uniforms and holding small Mexican and American flags sat in risers on the park's perimeter, chattering excitedly before the ceremony. Young soldiers in navy blue dress uniforms and hats faced the main stage. American and Mexican flags hung from long poles that formed a semicircle at the edge of the park.
Security was tight. Armed soldiers took positions on streets near Los Pinos. Reporters traveling as part of the White House press pool were funneled through two different metal detectors before entering the park. Bags were examined both by security guards and bomb-sniffing dogs.
Obama praised Mexico and Calderon for efforts to fight the drug cartels.
"At a time when the Mexican government has so courageously taken on the drug cartels that have plagued both sides of the border, it is absolutely critical that the United States join as a full partner with this issue," Obama said.
Before Obama spoke, however, the Mexican military announced that 15 gunmen and one soldier were killed in a shootout in the state of Guerrero, where Acapulco is located. Officials said the soldiers came under fire from a convoy of gunmen Wednesday while patrolling a drug-trafficking area.
Like much of the rest of Latin America, the Mexico that receives a visit from Obama today yearns for the kind of new partnership that the president espouses.
The United States plans to help Calderon, who with his cabinet Obama said at the news conference has done "an outstanding and heroic job" in taking on the country's violent drug cartels.
Obama said the issue was more than drugs, but included efforts to curb cash and guns going south.
Powerful drug-trafficking organizations have unleashed a wave of violence that has claimed more than 10,000 lives in just over two years and could threaten Calderon's ability to govern. Calderon has repeatedly called on Washington to do more to stop the flow of weapons and drug money from the U.S. and to curb the demand for the tons of cocaine and marijuana that Mexican traffickers send north.
Obama is expected to use the same moves that he did during his successful European visit earlier this month. He vowed to listen and acknowledged past American shortcomings as he called for a focus on the future.
"Too often, the United States has not pursued and sustained engagement with our neighbors," Obama wrote in an op-ed published today in newspapers in Florida and across Latin America. "We have been too easily distracted by other priorities, and have failed to see that our own progress is tied directly to progress throughout the Americas."
Obama continued: "My administration is committed to the promise of a new day. We will renew and sustain a broader partnership between the United States and the hemisphere on behalf of our common prosperity and our common security."
Thus far, the Obama administration has promised to put more law enforcement agents along the border, step up southbound inspections, accelerate release of portions of the $1.4 billion in aid allotted under the so-called Merida Initiative and reexamine domestic drug-use policies.
Calderon's offensive against the drug gangs has consisted primarily of deploying 45,000 army troops to the most violent areas of his nation, including traditional drug-producing centers such as the state of Sinaloa, and border cities such as Tijuana.
Separately, and less successfully, he is attempting to reform major institutions by purging and retraining corrupt police forces, changing the way trials are conducted and pushing legislation to make it possible to investigate money laundering. It is in these latter "institution-building" measures that U.S. aid is especially critical, Mexican officials say.
While Obama is expected to focus on the drug war, Mexicans have other issues they want to raise.
On immigration, Mexico favors an expanded temporary-workers program that would allow Mexicans to travel back and forth over the border legally and expeditiously. About half of the 12 million illegal immigrants said to be living in the U.S. are Mexican, and regularizing their status is a priority for Calderon's government.
Obama has pledged to tackle comprehensive immigration reform, but it's a politically sensitive topic in the U.S., where there is no consensus. The issue is particularly sensitive during times of economic downturn.
The economies of the two countries are closely interconnected, and the crisis in the U.S. is felt acutely here. Remittances and exports of manufactured goods and oil -- Mexico's principal income providers -- are all declining. Another point of contention is a dispute over Mexican long-haul trucks, which under the North American Free Trade Agreement are supposed to be allowed to transport cargo in the U.S. The Obama administration suspended the program; Mexico retaliated by slapping tariffs on $2 billion worth of fruit, electronics and other U.S. exports destined for Mexico.
Speaking to reporters on Air Force One, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said the issues that Obama will raise in Mexico are the same ones he will discuss at the summit.
"First and foremost is the economy, the global economic crisis, and what should be done to help it," he said. "In both Mexico and at the summit, energy and climate change will be important conversations that are had. And undoubtedly in both we'll talk about safety and security, first and foremost here in Mexico with the initiative that Congress and the administration -- both administrations, the previous administration and our administration, have undertaken."
One country that won't be at the summit is Cuba. While holding on to the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba as leverage for promoting greater political freedom in the neighboring island nation, Obama is easing travel restrictions and financial rules for Cuban-Americans who want to visit their relatives, help them financially or communicate via cellphone.
To go further, he said he is looking for "some signal" of changes in Cuba's handling of political prisoners, travel by Cubans, religious liberties and free-speech rights.
"And if there is some sense of movement on those fronts in Cuba, then I think we can see a further thawing of relations and further changes," he said.
On Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a fierce critic of the U.S. and an ally of Cuba who has called Obama's predecessor "the devil," Obama said: "Look, he's the leader of his country and he'll be one of many people that I will have an opportunity to meet."
On the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba: "Some of the practices of enhanced interrogation techniques, I think, ran counter to American values and American traditions. . . . I'm a strong believer that it is important to look forward and not backward and to remind ourselves that we do have very real security threats out there."
On the image of the U.S. in the region: It's had its "ups and downs," he said, but, "there's a reason why there are consistently so many immigrants to our country from Latin America." The U.S., he says, still is the land of "hope."
Isabel Tovar
