Trump delays drug-cartel designations

President Donald Trump announced that he would temporarily hold off on designating Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations, saying he was doing so at the request of the president of Mexico, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

"All necessary work has been completed to declare Mexican Cartels terrorist organizations," Trump said in a Twitter post Friday. "Statutorily we are ready to do so."

However, the president said that at the request of Lopez Obrador, "a man who I like and respect, and has worked so well with us," Trump is temporarily holding off on the designation and is stepping up "joint efforts to deal decisively with these vicious and ever-growing organizations!"

Trump did not make clear how long he was prepared to delay the designation or what precisely the Mexican president had requested.

Lopez Obrador, speaking at an event late Friday in his home state, Tabasco, applauded Trump's decision.

"I celebrate that he has taken our opinion into account," the Mexican president said. "There has to be cooperation with respect for our sovereignties, cooperation without interventionism. And I think it was a very good decision that he took today."

"We thank President Trump for respecting our decisions and for choosing to maintain a policy of good neighborliness, a policy of cooperation with us," Lopez Obrador said. "He will always have, on our side, an open, frank, extended hand to continue moving forward together for the sake of our peoples and the good of our two nations."

Trump had said in an interview posted online Nov. 26 that he was moving ahead with the designation, citing the high number of Americans killed by cartels.

The comments, which were made in an interview with former Fox News host Bill O'Reilly and posted to O'Reilly's website, represented a shift in U.S. policy that the Mexican foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, had a day earlier said he did not believe would happen.

"I will be designating the cartels," Trump said in the interview. "I have been working on that for the last 90 days. You know, designation is not that easy; you have to go through a process, and we are well into that process."

Ebrard said in a Twitter post Friday that he appreciated Trump's announcement, and he predicted there would be good results.

Trump's announcement came a day after Attorney General William Barr met in Mexico City with Lopez Obrador and high-level officials from his administration. After his meeting with Barr, Lopez Obrador described the encounter as "good."

"As a lawyer, he understands our constitution obligates us to adhere to the principles of cooperation for development and nonintervention in foreign affairs," the Mexican president said on Twitter, referring to Barr. "In this way we will always be able to work together."

Mexican officials revealed little about the meetings Thursday.

A statement from the Mexican Foreign Ministry said the two sides had discussed "security priorities" for both nations and had talked about, among other issues, "cooperation in arms trafficking, money laundering, international drug flows and how to deal with transnational crime."

Deadly violence by drug cartels in Mexico gained new attention in the U.S. in recent weeks after the killings of three women and six children, all dual Mexican and American citizens, who were part of a fundamentalist Mormon community in the north of the country.

After that ambush, Trump said on Twitter that the time had come "for Mexico, with the help of the United States, to wage WAR on the drug cartels and wipe them off the face of the earth."

A Section on 12/08/2019

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