By Juan Ramón Peña

MONTERREY, MEXICO – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said at the end of her two-day visit to Mexico that that country will not be able to win its war against ruthless drug cartels without support from the United States.

The strategy Mexico is employing against the narcotics mobs is the right one, but the United States – which she acknowledged shares in the blame for the violent drug war – must also do its part, Clinton told a press conference Thursday after meeting with students in the northern industrial hub of Monterrey, capital of Nuevo Leon state.

The United States’ top diplomat’s visit to Mexico, her first to a Latin American country since assuming her Cabinet post, began Wednesday in Mexico.

During her visit, Clinton met with President Felipe Calderon and Foreign Secretary Patricia Espinosa – who accompanied her to Monterrey – and toured a state-of-the-art Federal Police training facility in the Mexican capital, among other activities.

The former first lady emphasized during her visit the nations’ shared responsibility in tackling the drug mobs, noting that the United States shares in the blame by not stopping demand for the drugs and the smuggling of weapons south of the border.

In that regard, she emphasized the Obama administration’s announcement this week of an action plan against arms trafficking to Mexico and money laundering.

She also reiterated that the U.S. government does not regard its southern neighbor as a “failed state,” a term that began circulating in U.S. media after a report earlier this year by the Virginia-based United States Joint Forces Command seemed to equate Mexico and Pakistan as states at risk of “a rapid and sudden collapse.”

Clinton struck a humble and empathetic chord, saying Mexico is facing a challenge to public safety and compared its high levels of violence to elevated violent crime rates in the United States in the 1980s and early 1990s, when her husband was running for president for the first time.

The police at that time was less well armed and had less manpower than the criminals, Clinton said, adding that a change in tactics and the use of technology turned the tide, something that “the Mexican government is doing now.”

Clinton, whose country is the world’s leading consumer of illegal drugs, announced on Wednesday the creation of a bilateral office to combat drug trafficking and expressed support for Calderon’s efforts to crack down on the cartels.

The Mexican president has deployed tens of thousands of soldiers and federal police to a dozen states to battle the warring cartels, but the violence has only accelerated, with around 1,500 people murdered in 2006, 2,700 in 2007 and more than 6,000 last year.

So far this year, roughly 1,500 people have died in gangland violence, Mexican daily El Universal reported Sunday.

Of the more than 6,000 people killed in drug-related violence in Mexico in 2008, almost of third of the fatalities occurred in the northern state of Chihuahua, which borders the United States.

Ciudad Juarez, which lies across the frontier from El Paso, Texas, has earned the dubious distinction of being Mexico’s most violent city, while, according to reports from the U.S. Border Patrol, violence on the U.S. side of the border also has increased.

Mexican authorities, however, have bristled at reports that blame the violence on Mexico’s notoriously corrupt police forces, repeatedly pointing out that not only is the United States the main market for the drugs smuggled through Mexico but that the well-armed cartels also get most of their high-powered weapons from dealers north of the border.

Mexican authorities also insist that tourists need not be afraid about visiting the Latin American country’s resorts and other destinations, saying the vast majority of victims are themselves directly involved in the drug trade.

President Obama announced Tuesday that hundreds more law-enforcement agents and other equipment and resources will be dispatched to the U.S.-Mexico border in an effort to curb the flow of weapons to the cartels and keep violence from spilling into the United States.

Funding for that effort will be drawn both from a $1.4 billion, three-year, Bush-era program known as the Merida Initiative, which Congress approved last year to counter drug trafficking in Mexico and Central America, and from this year’s stimulus package.

Clinton said Thursday that the United States will focus on its side of the border and that Mexican authorities will continue to bear responsibility for what happens in their country, but greater cooperation and information-sharing will make law-enforcement in both nations more effective.

Aware of the sensitive issue of Mexican sovereignty vis-a-vis its more powerful neighbor, Clinton stressed that the U.S. measures will be carried out on its territory and will not imply interference in Mexico. EFE