McCain likes Mexico talk on security

MEXICO CITY – After a closed-door meeting with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto on Friday, Republican Sen. John McCain said he was “convinced” that the new leader was “committed to taking action against the drug cartels.”

McCain also noted that Pena Nieto, in deference to U.S. sovereignty, appears determined to stay on the sidelines as Congress in Washington debates immigration policy changes that could affect millions of Mexicans.

The vote of confidence in Pena Nieto on the security front was significant, coming from an influential member of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee. Beginning in fiscal 2008, Congress appropriated $1.6 billion to help Mexico fight its organized crime cartels. Since Pena Nieto took office Dec. 1, however, observers in both countries have been trying to gauge his government’s willingness to maintain the high level of security cooperation between the United States and Mexico.

Pena Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary Party is widely believed to have cut deals with drug lords in past decades, when it ruled Mexico for most of the 20th century. More recently, his Cabinet members have criticized the so-called kingpin strategy of his predecessor, Felipe Calderon, that targets major drug capos and was developed and carried out with U.S. support.

At a news conference after his meeting with Pena Nieto on Friday, McCain said they had a substantive discussion about the immigration policy debate in Washington. But the Arizona senator, who supports a controversial pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants in the U.S., was vague about the details of his talk with the Mexican president on the matter.

“I think the president very appropriately began our conversation by saying he doesn’t want to tell the U.S. Congress what they should do,” McCain said. He said that Pena Nieto was concerned about his country’s vast and largely unpoliced southern border with Guatemala, where drugs and illegal immigrants typically cross freely.