U.S.-Mexico: rapport transformed by terrorist threat.

• Author: Pappalardo, Joe

Efforts are under way on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border to reform the national security relationship between the two nations in response to increased terrorism fears.

Experts agree on two points: the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 signaled a reappraisal of U.S. and Mexican security relations, and the pace of the change is painfully slow and endangered by political sensitivities.

Seeking to protect the interests of both nations, the Department of Homeland Security and its approximate Mexican counterpart, the Investigation and National Security Center (CISEN), formed six working groups in January 2003 to analyze protection of critical infrastructure along their 2,000-mile shared border.

The six groups are divided into sectors: health, energy, water, telecommunications, agriculture and transportation. The goal is to create an inventory of vulnerable systems and prioritize them in terms of risk, according to Mexican and American officials in Washington. The six groups' steering committee has met on four occasions, the last one in Mexico City in February, a senior Mexican embassy official told National Defense.

The goal of the groups is to determine which shared assets pose the greatest threat if they are targeted by terrorists, according to Francis "Pancho" Kinney, deputy director of the office of international affairs at DHS.

"We've been trying to do risk management so that we can invest our resources effectively," he said. "What we're trying to find are those things that, if they attacked, would really hurt us."

The agriculture group has identified nodes of vulnerability in the food chain and has incorporated existing food screening activities in both countries into one web-based communication system. In the area of public health, the group is preparing a manual to address information sharing between nations during a epidemiological crisis, and has established a group to oversee such coordination.

The water group has already completed its inventory of critical infrastructure, including dams and power plants, on the Rio Grande, Colorado and Tijuana Rivers.

The critical infrastructure program is a model for greater cooperation across borders, Kinney said, because it is working around traditional roadblocks and addressing shared concerns. "We're trying to convince every one of the 22 agencies within the department to look and see what the condition of their relationship with Mexico is, and see if it is strong enough to help their mission," Kinney said. "In most cases it's not."

Exceptions are notable, he said, such as the working relationship between the U.S. Coast Guard and Mexican Navy. Also facilitating an attitude change are cross-border power outages and public health threats, which accentuate the closeness of the two nations' infrastructure.

"We basically have an integrated food...