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Travel alert causes tension
between Mexico, Bush team
BY JOHN RICE
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
MEXICO CITY — A U.S. warning
about violence along the border in
Mexico created unexpected friction
with a crucial neighbor Thursday,
just as new Secretary of State Con
doleezza Rice and other new mem
bers of President Bush’s team are
starting to take office.
The blunt warning was issued be
cause of an upswing of killings and
kidnappings linked to battles be
tween drug gangs in towns along the
Mexican side of the border, but Mexi
co’s top Cabinet officer, Interior Sec
retary Santiago Creel, insisted the
warning “went too far.”
“Why didn’t they say anything a
week ago when I was in that meeting
with the secretary of homeland securi
ty?” Creel said in a nationally televised
interview, referring to a meeting with
Tom Ridge on Jan. 17 in Calexico,
Calif. “He didn’t express any concern
to me. On the contrary,” Ridge praised
Mexico’s actions, Creel added.
The outburst of Mexican irritation
came the day Rice took over and
while the Bush administration is
preparing to change leadership at the
Homeland Security and Justice de
partments, which deal with issues of
drug trafficking, immigration and
security along the Mexican border.
U.S. State Department spokesman
Richard Boucher defended the warn
ing Thursday, saying 27 U.S. citizens
have been abducted in Mexico’s
northern border region over the past
six months and two have been killed.
He said it was important to inform
Americans about the security
situation along the border.
Mexican officials seemed especial
ly irritated by the emphatic manner
of the U.S. warning: A formal an
nouncement by the State Department
was accompanied by the public
release of a letter to Mexican officials
by U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza,
who Mexicans consider to be a
relatively close friend of Bush.
Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Der
bez called the statement “exaggerated
and outside the scope of reality” and
said Mexican leaders are demanding
meetings to discuss the issue.
Both Creel and U.S. officials said
much of the violence has resulted
from Mexico’s success in arresting
drug chieftains, forcing destabilized
networks of gangsters to fight for
control of drug routes.
“We are giving battle, and this is
creating the conflicts we are seeing,”
Creel said.
Officials also are in the midst of a
heavy-handed cleanup of the coun
try’s three top-security prisons and
last week sent troops and federal
police to patrol several border cities.
Wednesday’s State Department an
nouncement noted that “the over
whelming majority of victims of vio
lent crime have been Mexican citizens”
but said some U.S. citizens have been
targets and all should be aware of “the
deteriorating security situation.”
“Mexico’s police forces suffer from
lack of funds and training, and the
judicial system is weak, overworked
and inefficient,” the State Depart
ment said. It noted that “some ele
ments of the police might be
involved” in the violence.
Garza’s letter referred to “the in
capacity of the local public forces of
order to confront the battle” be
tween drug gangs, which he said
could chill tourism.
He offered U.S. cooperation, but
Creel expressed irritation with his call
for Mexican officials to continue to
take action.
“Sure, we have a relation of neigh
bors, of friendship. We are partners in
a free-trade treaty,” Creel said. “But
up to there, eh? From the Rio Grande
below to the south, just us.”
Derbez complained of “an erro
neous evaluation on the part of our
colleagues” in the United States.
Derbez was stung Thursday by
a formal announcement that the Unit
ed States would not support his candi
dacy for leadership of the Organization
of American States. Washington threw
its backing to former Salvadoran
President Francisco Flores.
Creel, meanwhile, is the leading
contender for the 2006 presidential
nomination of President Vicente
Fox’s National Action Party, and the
spat gives him a chance to answer
critics who often accuse him of being
too willing to bow to U.S. interests.
Creel said the U.S. concern was le
gitimate and compared it to Mexican
complaints, which are often criticized
in the United States, about the treat
ment of Mexican migrants by U.S. au
thorities and anti-immigration groups.
He also returned fire over the two
countries’ records in fighting drugs.
“The capos are in Mexican prisons,”
Creel said. “1 wish there were more ca
pos in U.S. prisons. And above all, that
they do something about the problem
of consumption: Of course it’s what
drives drug trafficking. ’’
Leaders mark 60th anniversary
of Nazi death camp's liberation
BY MONIKA SCISLOWSKA
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
BRZEZINKA, Poland — Snow
flakes swirled around the crematori
ums and barbed wire of Auschwitz,
and a shrill train whistle pierced the
silence as frail survivors and hum
bled world leaders remembered the
victims of the Holocaust on Thurs
day, the 60th anniversary of the liber
ation of the Nazi death camp.
Candles flickered in the darken
ing winter gloom of the sprawling
site, which Israeli President Moshe
Katsav called “the capital of the
kingdom of death.”
During World War II, 1.5 million
people — mostly Jews — were killed
at the site. Others who perished there
included Soviet prisoners of war,
Poles, Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses,
homosexuals and political opponents
of the Nazis.
The haunting commemoration
was held at the place where new ar
rivals stumbled out of cattle cars and
were met by Nazi doctors who chose
a few to be worked to death while the
rest were sent immediately to gas
chambers. Others died of starvation,
exhaustion, beatings and disease.
“It seems if you listen hard
enough, you can still hear the outcry
of horror of the murdered people,”
Katsav said. “When I walk the
ground of the concentration camps, I
fear that 1 am walking on the ashes of
the victims.”
As night fell and the ceremony
ended with a locomotive whistle
blaring over loudspeakers, a half-mile
of train tracks leading from the front
gate to the crematoriums were set
ablaze in a pyrotechnic display —
two flaming rails amid the snow.
The 30 leaders, including Vice Presi
dent Dick Cheney, Presidents Alek
sander Kwasniewski of Poland,
Vladimir Putin of Russia and Jacques
Chirac of France, placed candles
shielded in blue lanterns on a low
stone memorial. Soldiers of a Polish
honor guard stood stiffly in the freez
ing wind. New Ukrainian President
Viktor Yushchenko gently set down his
candle and made the sign of the cross.
Germany’s President Horst Koehler
placed a candle but didn’t speak in
recognition of his country’s responsi
bility for the Holocaust and Adolf
Hitler’s attempt to wipe out Europe’s
Jews. In all, some 6 million Jews died
in Hitler’s network of camps, while
several million non-Jews also perished.
Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz
and neighboring Birkenau — the oc
cupiers’ names for Polish Oswiecim
and Brzezinka — on Jan. 27, 1945.
At the ceremony, young girls
brought blankets to survivors sitting
in the cold.
Auschwitz survivor Gabi Neu
mann, 68, traveled from his home in
Israel and held up a poster that bore
the words, “Stop it before it happens
again” and the yellow stars of the
European Union flag distorted to
resemble a swastika.
“1 made this poster because anti
Semitism is a big problem in Eu
rope,” said Neumann, who was an 8
year-old boy when he was freed from
the camp. Originally from Slovakia,
he lost a grandmother at Auschwitz.
“But she has no grave,” he said.
“I am happy there is snow here be
cause it keeps me from standing on
her ashes.”
Putin compared the Nazis with
modern terrorists.
“Today we shall not only remem
ber the past, but also be aware of all
the threats of the modern world,” he
said. “Terrorism is among them, and
it is no less dangerous and cunning
than fascism.”
Earlier in Krakow, Cheney noted
that the Holocaust did not happen in
some far-off place, but “in the heart
of the civilized world.”
“The story of the camps shows
that evil is real and must be called by
its name and must be confronted,”
he said.
People at the ceremony expressed
concern over recent incidents such as a
walkout from an Auschwitz commem
oration by far-right local legislators in
Germany and a statement from far
right National Front leader Jean-Marie
Le Pen in France, who minimized the
brutality of Nazi rule during the occu
pation by German troops. He said it
“was not particularly inhuman, even if
there were a few blunders.”
Camp survivor Franczisek Jozefi
ak, 80, said the world still needed
reminding.
“Today I’m remembering my father,
gassed here. I’m remembering the
atrocious things they did to us here,”
said Jozefiak, who is from Krakow.
The Nazi guards lined them up
and told some to go right, others left,
he said. Jozefiak went left, and his fa
ther went right and was taken to the
gas chamber.
“The message today is: No more
Auschwitz,” he said. “But the world
has learned nothing so far — you see
they are fighting and killing each
other everywhere in the world.
“Today they are saying a lot be
cause of the anniversary, but tomor
row they will forget,” he said.