After years of blaming each other, the United States and Mexico are finally ready to fight the traffickers together.
Corruption is widespread among the Mexican police, and some experts worry it could spread to the tens of thousands of soldiers assigned to fight drug traffickers.
The House approved a $12.7 billion emergency spending bill whose centerpiece commits the United States to train and equip Colombia's security forces to fight drug traffickers.
In June, Mr. Clinton and Mr. Hastert championed a bill to send $1.3 billion to help train and equip Colombian Army and police forces to fight drug traffickers.
Freed after the intervention of Sheikh Mohammed, a man well-known in the Sinai for his fight against traffickers, she was one of the lucky ones.
In recent weeks, after drug mayhem left dozens dead in Ciudad Juárez, another border city, President Felipe Calderón has revised a strategy that relied primarily on Mexican Army troops to lead the fight against traffickers.
The office did say in a report to be released Wednesday that the Obama administration had done a better job in recent months of spending the roughly $1.6 billion set aside to fight drug traffickers in Mexico and Central America.
"This a matter in which we need to rebuild our own institutions," he said, after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the fight against traffickers here was taking on the characteristics of an "insurgency," angering Mexican officials.
Pledging $4 billion in Colombian funds to the effort, he asked for an additional $3.5 billion from the United States, Europe and multilateral lenders in order to advance Colombia's peace efforts, promote economic development and judicial reform and fight drug traffickers.
