A10
S
KLMNO THE WORLD
U.S. to toughen sanctions, trade
rules for N. Korea RESPONSE TO
WARSHIP ATTACK
Clinton, Gates in Seoul on unprecedented visit
by Craig Whitlock and Karen DeYoung
ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTOS A soldier patrols Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Soldiers were entering homes Tuesday in search of explosives in response to an anonymous call.
Violence with growing sophistication Cellphone-triggered car bomb marks escalation in Mexican drug cartels’ tactics
by William Booth in mexico city
sophisticated device never before seen in Mexico, triggered by cell- phone after police and medical workers were lured to the scene, according to Mexican and U.S. in- vestigators. The attack, which killed two po-
T
lice officers, a doctor and a man used as a decoy, represents a clear escalation in the weapons and tactics employed by Mexico’s powerful drug trafficking organi- zations, U.S. law enforcement agents say. Bomb experts with the U.S. Bu- reau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Fire- arms and Explosives, who have been training their Mexican coun- terparts, scrambled to help recon- struct the device. Parts of it recov- ered from the scene in downtown Ciudad Juarez were flown to Mexico City, where top officials from the United States and Mexi- co were briefed on the heightened threat. U.S. and Mexican officials said
they are taking seriously a mes- sage found after the attack that warned of more violence and demonstrated how closely the United States and Mexico are in- tertwined in the fight against the cartels. Graffiti left on the wall of an el- ementary school Monday specifi- cally warned the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administra- tion that more car bombs would follow in the next two weeks un- less U.S. agents investigated al- leged ties between Mexico’s “cor- rupt federal authorities” and Joa- quin “El Chapo” Guzman’s Sinaloa drug cartel, which is fight- ing for control of the billion- dollar smuggling routes to the United States.
The remains of a vehicle are cordoned off in a Ciudad Juarez street after a sophisticated car bomb exploded last Thursday.
U.S. and Mexican investigators
who have examined the bomb de- bris found that the assailants placed as much as 22 pounds of Tovex, a water gel explosive com- monly used as a replacement for dynamite in mining activities, into an old Pontiac parked on the curb. The assailants drew police and medical workers to the scene by leaving a bound, wounded man in a police uniform near an intersec- tion and then calling in a false re- port that an officer had been shot. The bomb was then detonated by cellphone by someone within the line of sight of the Pontiac. Metal objects were packed around the device, increasing its lethality by producing a spray of shrapnel.
“Somebody knows what they’re
doing,” said a U.S. law enforce- ment official with knowledge of the improvised explosive device, or IED, who spoke on the condi- tion of anonymity, citing security protocols. “It was complicated. It was not unlike the kinds of IEDs you see in Iraq, but not quite as sophisticated,” the official said. Bomb technicians in the United
States said instructions for mak- ing such bombs are not easily gleaned from the Internet. “It’s not like making a pipe bomb,
which is relatively easy,” one ex- pert said. Nongovernmental security ex-
perts in Mexico said they suspect- ed that someone from Colombia’s drug trafficking organizations or guerrilla forces might have sup- plied instructions or built the de- vice, though they offered no evi- dence to support the speculation. Diplomats, police and officials
scrambled to assess the new threat. In Washington, Mexican Am- bassador Arturo Sarukhan told Congress, “What is important is not to create the perception that it was an indiscriminate act against civilians. It was not placed in the middle of a market. It was clearly directed against the police.” The U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Carlos Pascual, said the violence in Mexico is disturbing but has not reached the level of terrorism. “The bomb we saw in Ciudad
Juarez and at the Nuevo Laredo Consulate, where they threw a grenade, are obviously acts that we have to worry about,” he said. “But we must differentiate be- tween what is terrorism and what is not.” Terrorism, the U.S. ambassador
said, refers to the acts by groups with political objectives that seek to control the government.
he car bomb that exploded near the U.S. border in Ciu- dad Juarez last week was a
0 MILES 25 Las Cruces 10 200 miles Detail Ciudad Juarez
Pacific Ocean
400
Mexico City
MEXICO El Paso
NEW Ciudad Juarez CHIHUAHUA
MEXICO Chihuahua
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TEXAS U.S.
COAHUILA LARIS KARKLIS/THE WASHINGTON POST
“These drug cartels, they have enormous amounts of resources at their disposal,” said U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley. “They can buy any kind of capability they want. But we are determined, working with Mexico, to do everything in our power to reduce this violence.” In Mexico, opposition politi- cians and editorial writers scoffed at the assertion that a car bomb attack at a busy intersection in Ci- udad Juarez was not terrorism and said that U.S. and Mexican government officials were playing down the threat because their ac- tions — and failures — were partly responsible. “Mexico confronts a serious sit-
uation like no other in history since the 1910 Mexican Revolu- tion,” the leader of Mexican Sen- ate, Carlos Navarrete, said this week. “It is a struggle that has ex- hausted our government and the armed forces but has shown no reduction of the consumption of drugs or the availability of drugs in America.”
boothb@washpost.com DIGEST JAPAN N. Korean’s visit raises hopes on abductees
Japanese Prime MinisterNaoto Kan said Wednesday that the visit of a former North Korean spy could help resolve a decades-long mystery about the abduction of at least 17 Japanese citizens, an issue that is hin- dering normalization of ties between the two countries. Kim Hyon Hui, who helped carry out the 1987 bombing of a South
Korean airplane that killed 115 people, is meeting with family members of abductees during her tightly guarded trip to Japan. The kidnappings were part of a plan by North Korea to teach its spies
the Japanese language. When Kim and another agent boarded the Ko- rean Air Boeing 707 that would explode next day in flight — they plant- ed a time bomb and got off in Abu Dhabi — she used a Japanese pass- port. Her name: Mayumi Hachiya. In 2002, North Korea acknowledged that it had abducted Japanese citizens, and five of them returned to Japan that October. It has said the others are dead, an assertion Japan disputes. “I have strong expectations that this visit will lead to the freeing of
the victims, even if only a single day sooner,” Kan said. Kim says it is possible she knew some of the Japanese abductees;
however, she has lived in South Korea since her 1987 arrest and no lon- ger has a direct link to Pyongyang. She was sentenced to death but re- ceived a pardon in 1990.
— Chico Harlan AFGHANISTAN
Insurgents behead 6 Afghan policemen
Insurgents decapitated six po- licemen after attacking their checkpoint in northern Afghani- stan, NATO said Wednesday. The military coalition said the beheadings occurred after the
militants overran several govern- ment buildings Tuesday in Bagh- lan province’s Dahanah-ye Ghori district. NATO also announced the
death of an unidentified service member in an explosion in the south. The Danish military said he was a Dane. The death brought the number of NATO service members killed this month to 65.
Also Wednesday, the Afghan
Defense Ministry said that the killing of two U.S. civilian train- ers by an Afghan soldier at a base in northern Afghanistan on Tues- day was the result of a “verbal ar- gument” between the soldier and U.S. instructors. NATO had said it was unable to
say whether the deaths were an accident or had been intentional. — From news services
RUSSIA
2 killed in attack on hydropower plant Insurgents in the southern
Russian region of Kabardino-Bal- karia killed at least two security guards Wednesday in a raid on a hydropower station, detonating bombs that disabled the plant. The attack was a blow to Krem-
lin efforts to contain an Islamist insurgency in the mainly Muslim provinces of the North Caucasus. Rebels had threatened to target economic infrastructure, as well as police and civilians.
— Reuters
Peacekeepers harming Somali civilians, report says: African Union peacekeepers are indis- criminately shelling residential
areas of Somalia’s capital, Moga- dishu, according to a series of in- ternal reports. The evaluation was made months before Somali militants cited revenge for civil- ian deaths caused by A.U. soldiers as the motive behind the twin bombings that killed 76 people in Uganda last week.
Israeli shelling kills 2 Gaza mil- itants: Israeli shellfire killed two Palestinian militants and wound- ed six people, including a 10-year- old girl, in the Gaza Strip, Pales- tinian medical workers and an of- ficial with a militant group said. An Israeli military spokeswoman said soldiers opened fire on mil- itants suspected of preparing to fire a rocket at them.
MISHA JAPARIDZE/ASSOCIATED PRESS
French strike halts many flights: Hundreds of flights in France were canceled and smaller air- ports were shut down because of a strike by air traffic controllers worried that a plan to unify con- trol of European air space will cost jobs. Under the Singe Euro- pean Sky plan, the 27 separate air traffic systems now operating in the European Union would be re- duced to nine hubs.
Retrial ordered for Kosovo’s Ha- radinaj: Kosovo’s former prime
NO SHADE IN SIGHT A polar bear and his cub cool off at the Moscow Zoo on Wednesday. A heat wave hit central Russia, breaking records with high temperatures exceeding 86 degrees for the past two weeks.
minister, Ramush Haradinaj, will be retried for war crimes, appeals judges said. The former com- mander of the Kosovo Liberation Army, considered a hero by Koso- vo Albanians, was acquitted in 2008 after judges found prosecu- tors had failed to prove a deliber- ate campaign to kill and expel Serb civilians from Kosovo.
Remains of Ceausescus ex- humed: Taking the country by surprise, forensic scientists ex- humed what are thought to be the bodies of Romanian dictator Ni- colae Ceausescu and his wife, Ele- na, to resolve arguments about where they were actually buried after their 1989 execution. — From news services
White Sands Missile Range
0 MILES 20 100TE U.S. MEXICO
Gulf of Mexico
seoul — Searching for new ways to punish North Korea after blaming it for sinking a South Ko- rean warship in March, the Oba- ma administration announced Wednesday that it will strengthen existing sanctions against the North and impose new restric- tions on its weapons trade and trafficking in counterfeit currency and luxury goods. Administration officials travel- ing here with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and De- fense Secretary Robert M. Gates offered few details of what seemed a hastily put-together ad- dition to previously announced warnings and measures reflecting displeasure. On Tuesday, the Unit- ed States and South Korea said they would hold “large-scale” military exercises in an attempt to deter further hostile acts by North Korea.
Seoul and Washington have also agreed that U.S. commanders will retain operational control of their joint military forces in South Korea, in the event of a new war, until at least December 2015. Pre- viously, the U.S. military was scheduled to hand over opera- tional command in 2012. Officials from both countries said they had been considering the delay before the March 26 sinking of the Cheonan, but that recent concerns about North Ko- rea clinched the decision. On an unprecedented joint visit
Wednesday to the Demilitarized Zone that divides the two Koreas, Clinton and Gates marked the 60th anniversary of the start of the Korean War. Clinton said that as she gazed through binoculars across the most heavily guarded border in the world, delineated by razor wire and land mines, “it struck me that although it may be a thin line, these two places are worlds apart.” Gates was making his third trip to the DMZ; Clinton had never been there. The defense secretary said his last visit was 20 years ago, when he was director of the CIA. “It is stunning how little has
changed up there and yet how much South Korea continues to grow and prosper,” Gates said, standing with Clinton in the rain outside a small U.N. building that straddles the border. “The North, by contrast, stagnates in isolation and deprivation. And, as we saw with the sinking of the Cheonan, it continues its history of unpre- dictable and, at times, provocative behavior.” Clinton and Gates later laid a
wreath at the Korean War memo- rial and met with their South Ko-
rean counterparts. They were to meet Wednesday night with Presi- dent Lee Myung-bak. Along with a visit to Seoul by Adm. Mike Mul- len, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chair- man, the meetings and events were intended to send a message of strong U.S.-South Korean rela- tions at a time of heightened ten- sions in the region. It was unclear Wednesday what
effect, if any, the new sanctions would have. North Korea is al- ready the most isolated country in the world, with heavy U.S. and U.N. restrictions against financial and military dealings with it. Senior administration officials told reporters traveling with Clin- ton, whose week-long trip to Asia ends Friday in Vietnam, that they are still examining new types of sanctions. They said they are pay- ing particular attention to illegal trade in counterfeit cigarettes, li- quors and “exotic foods” that are a lucrative source of income for the North Korean elite. At a news conference with
Gates and South Korea’s defense and foreign ministers, Clinton said the goal of the sanctions was to “target [North Korea’s] leader- ship, to target their assets.” The officials said they would also seek to further tighten North Korean dealings with interna- tional banks, using the banks’ fear of “reputational risks” as well as specific measures that would cut them off from U.S. financial insti- tutions.
Analysts generally agree that the most successful round of sanctions against North Korea oc- curred in 2005, when the U.S. Treasury designated the Macao- based Banco Delta Asia as a mon- ey-launderer of North Korean il- licit assets. Banks across the world cooperated, worried that the Treasury Department would block them from doing business with the United States. North Ko- rea returned to the six-party talks on its nuclear weapons program, but its price was $25 million held by Banco Delta Asia. It took the Treasury Department five months to find a bank willing to wire the money to Pyongyang. Asked whether suspended six-
party talks over the North’s nu- clear weapons program and other issues could be resumed if North Korea would admit responsibility for the Cheonan sinking and apol- ogize, Clinton said that talks “are not something we are looking at yet. . . . We expect to see North Ko- rea” not only accept responsibility for the sinking, but also take “irre- versible steps” to stop its weapons program.
whitlockc@washpost.com deyoungk@washpost.com
Staff writer John Pomfret in Washington contributed to this report.
on
washingtonpost.com N. Korea sanctions
The U.S. announced that it will strengthen sanctions
against North Korea, during an unusual VIP visit.
THURSDAY, JULY 22, 2010
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