Mexico unveils details of new security strategy

Mexico City, Feb 13 (AP) Mexico's new administration offered the first details of a long-touted shift in the country's war on drugs, saying the government will spend USD 9.2 billion this year on social programs meant to keep young people from joining criminal organizations in the 251 most violent towns and neighborhoods across the country. The government will flood those areas with spending on programs ranging from road-building to increasing school hours, President Enrique Pena Nieto and Interior Secretary Miguel Angel Osorio Chong said yesterday. "It's clear that we must put special emphasis on prevention, because we can't only keep employing more sophisticated weapons, better equipment, more police, a higher presence of the armed forces in the country as the only form of combating organized crime," Pena Nieto said. The rhetoric of the announcement was a forceful rejection of Pena Nieto's predecessor, Felipe Calderon, who deployed thousands of troops to battle cartel gunmen and frequently boasted of the number of drug-gang leaders arrested and killed on his watch. But the speeches by Pena Nieto and Osorio Chong contained few specifics more than two months into a presidency marred by continuing violence in many states and a headline-grabbing series of horrifying crimes, including the kidnapping and slaying of an entire 17-member band near the northern city of Monterrey and the gang rape of six Spanish tourists in the resort city of Acapulco. Analysts said the strategy, to be carried out by nine federal departments coordinated by a new Interagency Commission for the Prevention of Violence and Criminality, marked an important change in tone but not necessarily in the day-to-day reality of Mexico's battle against drug cartels. "They're going to throw a lot of money at a lot of programs. That is ground for skepticism," said Alejandro Hope, a security analyst and former high-ranking official in Mexico's national intelligence agency. "The level of specificity is not there yet. I find this disconcerting." Officials did not say by late Tuesday afternoon what communities would be targeted or how much of the money was funding that had already been announced as part of other programs. Osorio Chong and Pena Nieto said the anti-crime program would overlap with a national anti-hunger initiative that was announced last month and is meant to aid more than 7 million hungry Mexicans in 400 of the country's poorest municipalities. (AP) IRH 02130712 NNNN