The United States ambassador to Mexico, Ken Salazar, has sought to rebuild the ties of the bilateral relationship with the Government of Claudia Sheinbaum, the Mexican president. The American diplomat has stated that in the more than two weeks that the Sheinbaum Administration has been in office, cooperation has been maintained in matters of security, migration and economic integration of the North American region. Salazar’s message, given to the media at the Embassy headquarters, is an attempt to restore the bilateral relationship, which was damaged in the last stretch of the Government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who decreed a diplomatic “pause” following the criticism launched by the Administration of Joe Biden to the controversial judicial reform, and by the capture – without Mexico’s collaboration – of the drug lord Ismael El Mayo Zambada. “We are on a very good path. The relationship between the United States and Mexico will never pause,” said Salazar. “There is no pause now, and in reality there has never been a pause. The exchange we have is strong, deep, authentic; “a very good dialogue,” he added.
The US official has highlighted “the leadership of President Sheinbaum and her team,” which he has defined as a “strong” group. Salazar has stated that since October 1, when Sheinbaum took office, the delegations of both countries have held intense work sessions. “Since she became president, we have had meetings that for me have been a great honor,” he said. He has highlighted the meeting that he and the president led on Tuesday with businessmen from Mexico and the United States, and another on Wednesday at the National Palace with senior officials from both countries. “In the meetings we have had with her Cabinet, we are working to advance security between the United States and Mexico, we are working on energy, climate change, on the integration of our economies and creating the strongest power in the world in North America,” he said.
The bilateral relationship in the Sheinbaum Administration did not start off well at all. The president has demanded that Washington officially clarify the circumstances of El Mayo Zambada’s arrest and his subsequent transfer to US territory. The capture of the kingpin has unleashed a war between groups of the Sinaloa Cartel and has left dozens dead. At the time, López Obrador demanded that the US be held accountable, since the arrest was made behind the back of the Mexican government, a sign of Washington’s distrust of its counterparts on the other side of the border. In the first week of her administration, Sheinbaum echoed her predecessor’s claim to the US. As a culmination of the tensions, the president instructed her Cabinet that all requests for information coming from the US Embassy should be channeled through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, headed by Juan Ramón de la Fuente.
This Thursday, Ambassador Salazar was questioned about whether the Biden administration would heed the request to clarify the details of El Mayo’s capture. “We are working on that with the Attorney General’s Office,” the diplomat responded briefly, and assured that the US has cooperated by sharing information from the first moment of the arrest. Salazar preferred to highlight the strengths of the bilateral relationship. “In terms of security, we have made progress in the fight against fentanyl, against the flow of weapons coming from the US to Mexico, in the fight against organized crime, in the issue of migration we have made history in that work,” he said.
After the sentence handed down on Wednesday to Genaro García Luna, who was Secretary of Security in the Government of Felipe Calderón, for links to drug trafficking, Salazar stated that priority will be given to the exchange of bilateral information to prevent more corrupt officials. “We and President Sheinbaum are aligned on what needs to be done to ensure that the officials [officials] are not corrupt. “We have to work on that, to make sure that we have an authentic exchange of information that we and the Government of Mexico have. That is why one of the priorities, which we have as a shared priority, is security, and to be clear about how we are going to work [on these issues] from now on,” he said.
Source: elpais
