Mexico’s top diplomat on Friday criticized comments by former U.S. Attorney General William Barr, who had called for increased U.S. involvement in Mexico to tackle drug cartels, saying Mexico “will never allow its sovereignty to be violated.” Following an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal by Barr last week, Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard penned his own response in the newspaper, stressing joint cooperation over U.S. military involvement in Mexico. Barr’s opinion piece compared Mexico’s “narco-terrorist” cartels to the jihadist Islamic State and backed a Republican proposal to give the U.S. president the power to send the military to fight against the cartels. “The voracious demand for drugs in the U.S., along with the widespread availability of military-style weapons there, largely explains the cartels’ power to wreak havoc,” Ebrard shot back. (https://neuters.de/world/americas/mexicos-top-diplomat-stresses-cooperation-with-us-versus-intervention-2023-03-11/) In recent days, calls for U.S. intervention in Mexico have ramped up after two Americans were killed and two others kidnapped in the Mexican border state of Tamaulipas, presumably by a drug cartel.