MEXICO CITY: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will visit Mexico next week to discuss a new strategy to combat drugs and organized crime, Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said Wednesday.
The top US diplomat is expected in Mexico City on October 8, accompanied by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Ebrard told reporters.
At the top of the agenda is a memorandum of understanding "on what the priorities are, the security approach on which we can agree," he said.
"Our priority is to reduce violence, homicides, all forms of violence that we have in Mexico," he said.
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President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has urged the United States to end a security assistance program called the Merida Initiative and instead invest in economic development in Mexico and Central America.
"The Merida Initiative is over. Now we're entering another stage," Ebrard said, adding that the plan had only left "an increase in (drug) consumption, an increase in violence and an increase in arms trafficking."
Launched in 2008, the Merida Initiative aimed to combat drug trafficking with US military equipment, technical support and training for security forces in Mexico and Central America, which received more than $3 billion in aid under the plan.
Ebrard said that the migration crisis that has seen tens of thousands of undocumented foreigners, mostly Haitians, arrive in Mexico in recent weeks heading for the United States was not expected to be discussed as it was a separate issue.
The situation facing the migrants on the border has provoked a major backlash for US President Joe Biden's administration, which repatriated around 2,000 Haitians on expulsion flights.
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