Mexico left in the dark on Fast and Furious, ambassador says

Source: LAT

WASHINGTON — The failed federal gun-tracking operation called Fast and Furious showed an "outstanding lack of understanding of how criminal organizations are operating on both sides of our common borders," the Mexican ambassador to the United States said.

In a forum Thursday on Capitol Hill, Arturo Sarukhan complained that his government had been left in the dark about operations to stop gun smuggling at the border. He also revealed that his government was conducting its own official investigation into how some 2,000 U.S.-purchased firearms made it across the border and into the hands of drug cartels amid the escalating violence in Mexico.

"Mexico was never apprised how the operation would be designed and implemented," Sarukhan told officials at a forum hosted by the New Democrat Network, or NDN, a center-left think tank and advocacy organization, and the New Policy Institute, one of its sister organizations.

"Regardless of whether this was or was not the intent or the design of Fast and Furious," Sarukhan said, "the thinking that you can let guns walk across the border and maintain operational control of those weapons is really an outstanding lack of understanding of how these criminal organizations are operating on both sides of our common borders."

Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-fast-furious-20120601,0,3596568.story