US envoy says Mexico not safe, blames ex-president for failed security

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – The U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Ken Salazar, said on Wednesday that the country is not safe and criticized the previous president for a failed security policy and refusing to accept American assistance.

“The reality is that at the moment Mexico is not safe,” Salazar said during a press conference at his residence in Mexico City.

The ambassador criticized former President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador directly, saying security coordination between Mexico and the U.S. had suffered during his term.

“Unfortunately this coordination has failed in the last year, in great part because the previous president did not want to receive help from the United States,” he said.

Lopez Obrador’s attempt to address the root causes of violence, a strategy he called “hugs not bullets,” did “not work,” Salazar said.

He added he hoped that President Claudia Sheinbaum, who took office last month, would have greater success in fighting crime and violence by investing more in security.

Sheinbaum, who belongs to the same party as Lopez Obrador, has stressed that her security policy will follow closely that of the previous president.

The comments come as relations between Lopez Obrador and Salazar have become increasingly fraught in recent months, after the ambassador criticized a judicial overhaul being driven by the former president.

It marks a distinct change from the earlier part of Lopez Obrador’s presidency when the two were regarded as having a close working relationship – a proximity that some U.S. diplomats privately criticized.

Mexico has suffered a recent wave of violence with hundreds killed in intra-cartel warfare in the state of Sinaloa as well as massacres in other states such as Queretaro where 10 people were killed in a bar over the weekend.

(Reporting by Diego Delgado; Writing by Stephen Eisenhammer; Editing by Sandra Maler)