Americas

Americas

Mexico, Guatemala to reactivate security mechanism

16 December 2011 03:46 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Mexican President Felipe Calderon and visiting Guatemalan President-elect Otto Perez Molina on Thursday agreed to revive "immediately" bilateral security arrangements to deal with organized crimes, drug trafficking and migration, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

After their meeting in Mexico City, Perez said both countries are "prisoners of an exogenous phenomenon," referring to drug trafficking.

"We immediately agreed to reactivate bilateral mechanisms of safety and will work in coordination," said Perez, who will take office on Jan. 14.

In recent years there has been a growing presence and violence of Mexican drug cartels in Guatemala, where 27 peasants were killed last May by Los Zetas cartel.

"The cornerstone of our relationship in coming years will be tackling this sensitive issue (organized crime and safety) to ensure economic growth, social development and foreign and domestic investment," Perez said.

The meeting was the second between the two leaders after they held talks on Dec. 3 at the Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean (ECLAC) in Caracas.

Guatemala is the largest trading partner of Mexico in Central America, and together they share a border of nearly 1,000 km, crossed by hundreds of thousands of Latin American migrants each year who attempted to reach the United States through Mexican territory.

Calderon noted that in the last 10 years, bilateral trade grew from 650 million to 2 billion U.S. dollars.

"We must move toward even greater trade liberalization" and "promote the mobility of people and goods," he said.

He acknowledged that organized crimes must be addressed "jointly" to eliminate cartels "operate in both countries."