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veggie

Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,538
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Guatemala to put army on border in drug war
#8498171 - 06/07/08 11:47 PM (15 years, 11 months ago) |
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Guatemala to put army on border in drug war June 8, 2008 - dominicantoday.com
Guatemala City.– Guatemala plans to send hundreds of troops, elite presidential guards and anti-drug police to its border with Mexico to stem growing drug violence, the government said on Saturday.
"The unit should be ready within about 90 days. We are talking about 500 troops" and members of the presidential guard, Interior Ministry spokesman Ricardo Gatica said.
Gatica declined to say how many counternarcotics police would be sent to the border, where drug smuggling into southern Mexico, bound for the United States, goes unchallenged.
In southern Mexico, suspected drug gunmen dumped a man's head outside a newspaper in Tabasco state on Saturday with a message threatening police and rivals, the state attorney general's office said.
"This is what will happen to those who interfere. The army won't protect you," the message read, according to a spokesman who declined to be named.
The Guatemalan deployment is part of a $1.4 billion U.S. anti-drug aid plan for Mexico and Central America proposed by President George W. Bush.
The so-called Merida Initiative needs U.S. congressional approval, but Gatica said Guatemala was likely to go ahead even if Congress failed to act.
Lawmakers in Washington have held up the plan with calls to attach conditions on how and where the aid –which includes helicopters and encrypted communication device– is used. They also want to include human rights oversight in the package.
The U.S. Senate wants Mexican soldiers accused of crimes to be tried in civilian courts. It also wants federal officials to take on state and local anti-drug roles, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy says.
The government of Mexican President Felipe Calderon says any conditions for the aid are unacceptable because Mexico is undergoing its own police and judicial reform.
Guatemala, a key transit point for South American cocaine into Mexico and the United States, is seeing growing drug violence between gangs vying for smuggling routes into Mexico.
More than 1,400 people have been killed in drug violence this year across Mexico in cartel turf wars, a faster rate than in 2007, when around 2,500 died over the year.
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j0nnyb0y05
IBelieveInBelivin



Registered: 09/01/07
Posts: 2,076
Loc: Going Going, Back Back to
Last seen: 9 years, 10 months
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Re: Guatemala to put army on border in drug war [Re: veggie]
#8498748 - 06/08/08 02:09 AM (15 years, 11 months ago) |
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arent the police the focus of their violence. by sending more people to the border is just going to make more bodies
-------------------- .....Healing Of People Everywhere.....
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OrgoneConclusion
Blue Fish Group



Registered: 04/01/07
Posts: 45,441
Loc: Under the C
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Re: Guatemala to put army on border in drug war [Re: j0nnyb0y05]
#8498885 - 06/08/08 03:44 AM (15 years, 11 months ago) |
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Hey, it 'worked' in Iraq...
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EntheogenicPeace
Scholar



Registered: 10/04/05
Posts: 3,926
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Re: Guatemala to put army on border in drug war [Re: veggie]
#8499565 - 06/08/08 10:46 AM (15 years, 11 months ago) |
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Edited by EntheogenicPeace (02/15/21 06:32 PM)
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