Security and Prosperity Partnership initiative
¹
µ
U.S., Canada, Mexico pledge security
6.27.05 Beth Duff-Brown
AP
U.S., Canada and Mexico pledged Monday to shore up security by integrating their terrorist watchlists and beefing up joint protection of borders and bridges. At the same time, they promised to expand what is already the world's largest trading partnership by developing a single program to facilitate the free flow of people and goods across their shared borders.
"We are 3 countries, 3 friends living in the same neighborhood, so we have a common interest in our mutual security and our mutual prosperity," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told a news conference in Ottawa after he and his Canadian & Mexican counterparts unveiled their list of targets & initiatives.
"We want to confront external threats; we want to prevent and respond to threats to North America and we want to facilitate the flow of traffic across our borders," Chertoff said. "The more secure our region is, the more our prosperity will flourish."
Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan said 300 proposals were under review to ensure security and the free flow of North American trade and harmonize the screening of dangerous people or cargo.
"The proposals today will go a long way toward protecting North America, while maintaining each country's sovereignty," she said.
Monday's session follows 5.23.05 formation of a Security and Prosperity Partnership initiative announced by President Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin and Mexican President Vicente Fox after their meeting in Waco, Texas.
The three leaders, who have sought to improve coordination since 9.11.01 terror attacks, asked their top security & trade ministers to report back within 90 days on initiatives to enhance security and promote the economic well-being of their citizens.
Some other proposals include:
• Coordinating programs to ensure governments are prepared for large-scale emergencies or terrorist attacks;
• Joint protection of critical cross-border infrastructure, such as the Ambassador Bridge that spans the Detroit River and facilitates one-fourth of the daily $1.4 billion in trade between Canada and the United States;
• Strengthening approaches to maritime and aviation security;
• Establishing a second site for a Canada-U.S. pilot project that would check cargo and passengers before they cross the border;
• And creating a single, integrated program to allow "trusted travelers" who frequent the borders to travel quickly by air, land and sea.
On the economic front, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez and his Canadian & Mexican counterparts, David Emerson and Carlos Abascal, said they would develop a coordinated strategy to combat counterfeiting and piracy by the end of next year; create more regulatory consistency and further integrate their automobile and steel industries; and relax rules that will allow for an additional $25 billion worth of duty free goods.
Gutierrez said U.S., Canada and Mexico have a trading relationship worth more than $700 billion a year; an increase of 88 percent between 1993 and 2003.
"So we have a lot of jobs and a lot of prosperity tied to this very important trading relationship," Gutierrez said, but added: "No market economy can thrive without safety and security for its people. The threats we face require seamless cooperation that extends beyond our borders."
Emerson said the 3 nations must stand as one powerful trading block against other growing economies. North America accounts for one-third of the world's gross domestic product and he said investors would continue to look toward North America only if it is competitive.
"The rest of the world has not been standing still, far from it," Emerson said. "A booming China is changing the competitive landscape and causing the reconfiguration of global supply chains. India is not far behind; the European Union, despite recent setbacks, will continue to get bigger & stronger."
The White House praised the efforts of the ministers, who said they would report back to their leaders in the fall.
"Their report represents an important first step in achieving the goals of the SPP," read a statement from the White House
|
Global stance against organized crime is urged at Interpol conference
Deputy U.S. Atty. Gen. David Ogden says intelligence agencies need to cooperate better to combat crime syndicates, which are increasingly teaming up with terrorist networks.
10.13.09 Josh Meyer L.A. Times
¹
Wash.D.C. An aggressive global response is needed to counter organized crime syndicates, which are increasingly teaming up with terrorist networks and drug traffickers, U.S. and international law enforcement officials said Monday at a conference in Singapore.
Deputy U.S. Atty. Gen. David Ogden and some of his counterparts, speaking at the 78th general assembly of the global police agency Interpol, acknowledged that they needed to cooperate better on many fronts.
Of particular interest, they said, are emerging money-laundering pipelines that are enabling crime syndicates to flourish in terrorist hot spots such as Pakistan and Afghanistan and other strategic locations, including Europe, Africa and Latin America.
Ogden told delegates that they needed to act more forcefully to combat transnational organized crime groups whose proceeds now comprise up to 15% of the global gross domestic product.
In his speech and in a recent interview with The Times, Ogden said the criminal groups' newfound economic clout had enabled some to neutralize and co-opt a wide array of political, judicial and law enforcement institutions, especially in countries destabilized by conflict or economic depression.
Mexican drug cartels, South Asian heroin-trafficking clans, and traditional crime families from Asia and the former Soviet-bloc countries are continuing threats, Ogden said.
He told the delegates that "criminal organizations can and do use their economic power to target individual public officials, public institutions and even entire countries to look for new victims and new markets. We are now witnessing in many parts of the world what U.S. AG Robert F. Kennedy almost a half-century ago presciently condemned in my own country as the 'private government of organized crime.' "
Ogden added that the lack of coordinated response by law enforcement agencies had allowed the crime syndicates to become stronger, better-equipped and able to forge closer ties with one another and with terrorist groups and corrupt govt officials.
"Encumbered in many ways, law enforcement has not been as quick to adapt to globalization, and criminals are well aware of this fact," Ogden said.
Pakistan's Interior Minister Rehman Malik, speaking at the conference Monday, said his country had experienced first-hand the dangerous synergy among Al Qaeda, radical Islamic militants and organized crime and drug-trafficking groups.
"Terrorists have no boundaries, no religion," he said, per to Associated Press. "This is the time we have to sit together and put our heads together. The cooperation needs to be even more effective."
based in Lyon, France, Interpol has been struggling since its inception in 1923 to coordinate global crime-fighting efforts. Ogden and other delegates urged their colleagues to work more closely with the international agency.
Ogden and other delegates also warned that law enforcement agencies needed to boost intelligence sharing and support the passage of strong laws to combat money laundering and to make it easier to seize criminal assets.
They said law enforcement agencies must stop feuding over turf and needed to weed out corrupt officials so there could be greater trust among agencies.
In his interview with The Times, Ogden said he was trying to forge closer cooperation among at least nine U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies, in part through the creation of a new International Organized Crime Intelligence and Operations Center.
|
If day by day the statistics tell us that people are becoming poorer, then day by day there will be & must be more resistance, peaceful but active, thoughtful but resolute and above all going beyond borders.
