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For the past 14 months, agents from the DEA, FBI and U.S. Customs Service who were to form the backbone of the U.S. portion of the force have refused to cross the border because they are not allowed to carry weapons in Mexico. And at least five senior Mexican off ....

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.... in the White House's National Drug Control Strategy report issued last month. "Regretfully, [the task forces] were never really implemented," DEA chief Thomas Constantine told Congress last week, blaming the failure on corruption and lack of security. U.S. officials said the Mexican government failed to finance the task forces and that U.S. agencies had borne the full cost of Mexican operations until last September. At that point, U.S. officials said, Mexico said it no longer wanted U.S. funding and that the task force would be paid for with money confiscated from drug traffickers. The analysis of the effort's failure comes as some members of ....