theguardian | Mexico’s president has written to his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, urging him to help control shipments of fentanyl, while also complaining of “rude” US pressure to curb the drug trade.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has previously said that fentanyl is the US’s problem and is caused by “a lack of hugs” in US families. On Tuesday he read out the letter to Xi dated 22 March in which he defended efforts to curb supply of the deadly drug, while rounding on US critics.
López Obrador complained about calls in the US to designate Mexican drug gangs as terrorist organisations. Some Republicans have said they favour using the US military to crack down on Mexican cartels.
“Unjustly, they are blaming us for problems that in large measure have to do with their loss of values, their welfare crisis,” López Obrador wrote to Xi in the letter.
“These positions are in themselves a lack of respect and a threat to our sovereignty, and moreover they are based on an absurd, manipulative, propagandistic and demagogic attitude.”
Only after several paragraphs of venting, López Obrador brings up China’s exports of fentanyl precursors, and asked him to help stop shipments of chemicals that Mexican cartels import from China.
“I write to you, President Xi Jinping, not to ask your help on these rude threats, but to ask you for humanitarian reasons to help us by controlling the shipments of fentanyl,” the Mexican president wrote.
China has taken some steps to limit fentanyl exports, but mislabelled or harder-to-detect precursor chemicals continue to pour out of Chinese factories.
It was not immediately clear if Xi had received the letter or if he had responded to it. López Obrador has a history of writing confrontational letters to world leaders without getting a response.
López Obrador has angrily denied that fentanyl is produced in Mexico. However, his own administration has acknowledged finding dozens of labs where it is produced, mainly in the northern state of Sinaloa.
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