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Mexican president pushes again on US criticism on violence Lalrp

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MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s president on Friday angrily rejected feedback by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken that the Mexican authorities has misplaced management over components of the nation.

Nevertheless, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador acknowledged that Mexican cartels had positioned individuals inside Mexico’s drug regulatory company to approve imports of fentanyl precursor chemical compounds from China.

Earlier this week, Blinken mentioned “I believe it’s truthful to say sure” when requested at a Senate listening to whether or not drug cartels management components of Mexico.

The Mexican president responded to these feedback at his morning press briefing Friday, saying, “That’s false, it’s not true. … There’s nowhere within the nation’s territory the place authorities usually are not current.”

However López Obrador acknowledged that cartels had stretched their tentacles into the Mexican authorities’s federal drug regulatory company, identified by its initials in Spanish as Cofepris.

“They even had representatives in Cofepris, individuals lobbying inside Cofepris,” the president mentioned, including that some officers have been charged in that case.

Mexican cartels have imported fentanyl precursors underneath false names or as mislabeled merchandise, with assist from contained in the regulatory company. They then process it into fentanyl, press it into counterfeit drugs made to seem like oxycodone, Xanax or Percocet and smuggle it into the US, the place the drug has brought on greater than 70,000 overdose deaths per 12 months.

López Obrador additionally pushed again towards feedback by Blinken suggesting that Mexico’s takeover of a port owned by a U.S. agency would harm funding in Mexico. Final week, Mexican police seized a cargo terminal owned by the Alabama-based development supplies firm Vulcan Supplies.

Talking earlier than legislators, Blinken mentioned “I’m very involved about that state of affairs” and “the potential for a case like this to have a chilling impact … on additional funding or engagement by our firms as they see what’s taking place.”

López Obrador claimed he was defending Mexico’s surroundings towards Vulcan’s crushed rock quarry on the Caribbean coast. Nevertheless, Mexican authorities already had shut down Vulcan’s quarrying activities final Could, and López Obrador didn’t clarify how seizing the port would shield the surroundings.

“I perceive Mr. Blinken very properly,” the president mentioned. “He has to do his job.”

The president has been publicly sparring with Vulcan for over a 12 months. He wants the Punta Venado port, close to Playa Del Carmen, to get cement, crushed stone and different supplies into the world to complete his pet mission, a vacationer practice generally known as the Practice Maya.

López Obrador’s feedback on drug cartel management got here after the Mexican authorities was stung by the execution earlier this week — apparently by a drug cartel — of a drug gang chief hunted for months within the killings of two Jesuit monks.

Mexican police couldn’t discover the suspect regardless of large searches, till the drug gangs took issues into their very own arms and apparently killed the suspect themselves.

The Mexican president confirmed that it concerned a standard observe amongst drug cartels, which frequently kill or flip over to police cartel members who’ve brought on an excessive amount of hassle and affected the gang’s enterprise.

“They executed him, who, we don’t know,” López Obrador mentioned, “maybe as a result of they thought that by doing so the search would finish and the troopers who’ve been there would go away.”