Mexican president threatens sabotage campaign against US Republican party

By Jorge Antonio Rocha

MEXICO CITY (AA) - President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador warned Friday that his government would launch a campaign against the US Republican party in the next election after their lawmakers pushed for American military action on Mexican territory to combat drug cartels.

After members of a cartel kidnaped four US nationals and killed two of them in Matamoros, Tamaulipas in northern Mexico, Republican lawmakers such as Sen. Lindsey Graham have pledged to push a bill that would enable the US military to deploy troops on Mexican territory and label cartels as terror organizations.

Graham promised to unleash American "fury and might" to destroy narco-drug labs and has criticized the Lopez Obrador administration for allowing criminal organizations to grow unchallenged.

"I would tell the Mexican government if you don't clean up your act, we're going to clean it up for you," he warned.

Lopez Obrador slammed Graham's taunts and accused the senator from the state of North Carolina of interventions, saying "What do these useless, interventionists and arrogant people think they are!"

The president promised that his government would campaign against the Republican party if their lawmakers did not cease attempts to intervene in Mexico.

"So, if they continue to offend Mexico, we will continue to denounce them and ask our countrymen not to vote for them,” he said. “And I am sure that not only Mexicans and other Latin American countries in the United States, but even Americans themselves will be in favor of us.”

Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard will travel to the US to brief Mexican consulates and Mexicans living and working in the US on the recent quarrel between the two North American neighbors, according to Lopez Obrador.

"Mexico has to be respected!" he said.