MONTERREY, Mexico (Reuters) – Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Tuesday he wants a new bill to tighten restrictions on “foreign agents” operating in Mexico to be approved this year, in a move that is widely seen as aimed at U.S. counter-narcotics officials.
“There is not a clear legal framework,” Lopez Obrador said in his regular morning news conference.
In a draft proposal sent to the Senate on Friday, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s office said foreign agents must share any information they obtain with Mexican authorities, and should be stripped of diplomatic immunity if they commit crimes or break regulations.
The document did not mention the United States, but Lopez Obrador has been highly critical of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) since the arrest in October of Mexico’s former army chief in a move that shocked Mexico’s political establishment.
President Lopez Obrador said on Tuesday that the proposed bill has not caused diplomatic tensions with the United States.
(Reporting by Laura Gottesdiener and Lizbeth Diaz; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel)
