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Clinton: U.S. drug users help cartels

Visit to Mexico seeks to ease path for Obama; Lieberman calls for aid

Mexico's President Felipe Calderon shakes hands with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday at Los Pinos presidential residence in Mexico City. Clinton is in Mexico for a two-day visit.

Mexico's President Felipe Calderon shakes hands with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday at Los Pinos presidential residence in Mexico City. Clinton is in Mexico for a two-day visit.

MEXICO CITY – The United States shares responsibility with Mexico for dealing with the bloody drug violence along the border, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday.

“Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade,” she said en route to Mexico City for a two-day visit aimed at easing strained relations between the neighboring countries. “Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the deaths of police officers, soldiers and civilians.”

She arrived Wednesday morning at Mexico City’s Benito Juarez International Airport and was greeted by her Mexican counterpart, Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa, and then whisked off in a motorcade for private talks with Espinosa and President Felipe Calderón at the presidential mansion.

Clinton arrived a day after the U.S. announced a raft of measures aimed at stemming the flow of guns and drug profits southward to Mexico. They included sending hundreds of federal agents, along with surveillance gear and drug-sniffing dogs, to the Southwest border.

“These are important actions of support for the fight that President Felipe Calderón’s government is carrying out,” Espinosa said Tuesday.

The praise followed months of tense relations between the two countries.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., chairman of the Homeland Security Department’s oversight committee, said Wednesday that he wants the federal government to spend more money to help Mexico fight drug cartels and keep violence from spilling across the U.S.-Mexico border.

Clinton’s visit is aimed at smoothing things over before a visit by President Obama on April 16-17, said Jesus Abel Sanchez, director of the International Studies Department at the Autonomous University of Sinaloa.

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DAILY DEVELOPMENTS

• Mexican drug cartels have infiltrated as many as 230 U.S. cities and now represent the most serious organized-crime threat to the United States, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told a Senate panel Wednesday.

• Soldiers captured Hector Huerta, one of Mexico’s most-wanted drug smugglers, the army said.

Gannett News Service and The Associated Press

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