This archive report was first published on 6 December 2019.
US Attorney General William Barr met with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on December 6, 2019, amidst rising tensions between the two countries over the issue of Mexican drug cartels.
The meeting came after US President Donald Trump vowed to designate Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations following the massacre of nine women and children from a US-Mexican Mormon family in northern Mexico.
López Obrador, who rejected Trump's plan, equating it to "interventionism," said Barr had been cordial in their closed-door meeting at the presidential palace in Mexico City.
"As a lawyer, he understands that our Constitution requires us to adhere to the principles of development cooperation and non-intervention in foreign policy," López Obrador wrote on Twitter afterward.
"On that basis we can always work together," he added.
The two leaders discussed joint security cooperation and the issue of gun trafficking from the United States, with López Obrador emphasizing that the violence of Mexico's "drug wars" is a shared problem fueled by both demand for narcotics in the United States and the black-market flow of American-made weapons south of the border.
The meeting was also attended by the Mexican foreign, defense, and navy ministers.
