Mexico’s president slams calls for US military to target cartels
Lopez Obrador denounces Republican-led push for US military intervention after fatal drug cartel abduction of Americans.
Mexico ‘does not take orders from anyone’, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador says [Henry Romero/Reuters]
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has rejected calls for the United States military to intervene to stem drug cartel violence in Mexico, saying such a move would violate the country’s sovereignty.
During a news conference on Thursday, Lopez Obrador said his government was “not going to permit any foreign government to intervene in our territory, much less that a government’s armed forces intervene”.
“In addition to being irresponsible, it is an offence to the people of Mexico,” he said, adding that Mexico “does not take orders from anyone”.
On Wednesday, Texas Republican Dan Crenshaw released a message in Spanish asking Lopez Obrador why he opposed a proposal the congressman introduced in January, authorizing US military force to target drug cartels in Mexico.
“The cartels are war with us — poisoning more than 80,000 Americans with fentanyl every year, creating a crisis at our border, and turning Mexico into a failed narco-state,” Crenshaw said in a statement on January 12 about the proposed legislation.
“It’s time we directly target them. My legislation will put us at war with the cartels by authorizing the use of military force against the cartels. We cannot allow heavily armed and deadly cartels to destabilize Mexico and import people and drugs into the United States.”
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham on Monday also said in a Fox News interview that it was time to “put Mexico on notice”. He advocated introducing legislation to classify some Mexican drug cartels as “foreign terrorist groups”.
