Mexico's battle against drug trafficking has weakened cartels but it cannot defeat them unless Washington cuts off their illegal supply of weapons, cash, and chemicals, Mexico's attorney general said Monday. A crackdown by 25,000 soldiers and police has imprisoned hundreds of smugglers and extradited dozens to the United States. But drug-related murders continue and are set to top 2,500 this year, up from 2,100 in 2006, officials said. “We are doing everything we can to stop drugs crossing to the Untied States, but given this is a transnational business, … it requires the United States do its part, and that essentially means the flow of arms to Mexico,” Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora said in Mexico City. Mexico is still waiting for delivery of $1.4 billion in drug-fighting equipment pledged by the United States. “We have done our part, we hope the United States will do its part,” Medina Mora said. Mexico has arrested 13,300 people on drug charges, and 89 were extradited to the United States to face trial. But the cartels still have weapons and cash that originate in the United States. Medina Mora said $10 billion in drug cash flows from the United States to Mexico each year, and that U.S. gun stores along the border sell twice as many weapons as stores elsewhere in the United States, implying a strong trade to Mexico. “There's a very large flow of money from the United States to Mexico which has no other explanation than drug trafficking. The U.S. government has a very important job to do,” Medina Mora said. The attorney general said Mexico also needed the United States to clamp down on the movement of Chinese and Indian chemicals, now prohibited in Mexico, that are flown in for the manufacture of methamphetamine.
