[NYTr] Mexico official blames attacks on intel failures due to budget cuts
 
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2007 01:44:44 -0500 (CDT)

Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 

sent by Milt Shapiro (mexnews)

Mexico official cites intel failures

AP - Sep 25, 2007

By E. EDUARDO CASTILLO, Associated Press Writer

Mexico's top security official said Tuesday that the country's 
intelligence agency has been hurt by budget cuts and staff reductions 
in recent years, weakening the government's ability to prevent 
attacks such as two recent pipeline bombings.

Answering angry questions by lawmakers in Congress, Interior 
Secretary Francisco Ramirez said the government has formed a special 
anti-subversion task force in response to the Sept. 10 and July 11 
attacks claimed by leftist rebels, which affected gas and oil 
deliveries and cost businesses hundreds of millions of dollars.

Ramirez said President Felipe Calderon inherited a weakened Center 
for National Security and Investigation, or Cisen, when he took 
office Dec. 1.

"We received a Cisen that had structurally deteriorated over time and 
that was not clearly in shape to handle this type of events," he said.

He said low budgets, a lack of technology and the departure of about 
1,000 agents in prior years had affected the agency's ability "to 
keep up on the movements of these groups" ? an apparent reference to 
the People's Revolutionary Army, or EPR, which claimed responsibility 
for the blasts at more than half a dozen ducts.

Ramirez said Cisen, the army, the attorney general's office and other 
security agencies established the new task force to protect the 
facilities of the state-owned oil monopoly Petroleos Mexicanos, or 
Pemex.

Calderon's administration had focused much of its attention on 
fighting drug traffickers in the first months of his term and 
appeared to have been caught somewhat off guard by the resurgence of 
the tiny guerrilla group, which had largely been dormant since the 
late 1990s.

Copyright B) 2007 The Associated Press

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