World Mar. 25, 2009 - 07:38AM JST ( 7 )

WASHINGTON —

U.S. President Barack Obama Tuesday announced extra agents for the southern border and vowed to staunch narcotics demand, as officials pledged full support for Mexico’s battle against drug cartels.

The White House vowed to stand “shoulder to shoulder” with Mexican President Felipe Calderon as his government confronts narcotics-linked violence that has claimed more than 1,000 lives so far this year.

“The president is concerned by the increased level of violence ... and the impact it is having on both sides of the border,” the White House said in a memo unveiling the new strategy.

“He believes that the United States must continue to monitor the situation and guard against spillover into the United States.”

Last year saw more than 5,300 killed in Mexico in drug-related bloodshed that experts say is fed by easy access to guns and drug profits in the United States.

The violence flared after Calderon declared war on drug cartels nearly two years ago, prompting armed resistance from drug barons and setting off a turf war between rival gangs.

Obama “admires President Calderon’s courage and determination to confront and dismantle the drug cartels, and we stand shoulder to shoulder with him in that fight,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said the Calderon government “will not fail” in its war against the cartels, and said U.S. security interests were at stake too with drug-related violence rising in Arizona and Texas.

The strategy was rolled out by the White House a day before Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visits Mexico, in the latest of a high-level series of trips by U.S. officials culminating in a visit by Obama in mid-April.

The U.S. plan funnels extra manpower from the Department of Homeland Security, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to stop spillover of the conflict.

The strategy will also create a special Federal Bureau of Investigation southwest intelligence group as a clearing house for all of the bureau’s activities involving Mexico.

In a simultaneous “Operation Firewall,” the Treasury Department is stepping up operations against money-laundering and smuggling of U.S. dollars by the cartels.

“As we found with other large criminal groups, if you take their money and lock up their leaders, you can loosen their grips on the vast organizations that are used to carry out their criminal activities,” Deputy Attorney General David Ogden said.

The Department of Homeland Security will double border enforcement security task forces at the border, triple department intelligence analysts there and double criminal alien teams supporting Mexican law enforcement agencies.

Napolitano said more than 360 extra officers and agents formed part of the “strategic redeployments,” as officials in Mexico’s violence-infested state of Chihuahua reported another four killings including that of a police chief.

But the former governor of frontier-state Arizona stressed her belief that a border wall promoted by the previous Republican administration was “not the best way” to prevent drugs from entering the United States.

The DEA will form four extra mobile enforcement teams to target Mexican amphetamine-trafficking operations and linked violence along the border and in US cities such as Phoenix, Arizona and Houston, Texas.

On the domestic front, the administration said it would expand the treatment capacity of U.S. drug courts and integrate drugs screening in health services to wean addicts off dependency and curb the demand for drugs.

Clinton will be followed in a week by Attorney General Eric Holder and Napolitano. Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited Mexico earlier this month.

Napolitano said that in her contacts already, she had raised the problem of ensuring that U.S. intelligence on drugs warlords “doesn’t get into the hands of the cartels” once it is given to Mexican officials.

“And historically, that has been a problem with respect to intelligence sharing in Mexico,” she said.

Wire reports