President Barack Obama expects to have a strategy in place within months to address security and drug-related violence on the U.S.-Mexican border, he told a group of newspapers.
"Our expectation is to have a comprehensive policy in place in the next few months," Obama said, according to a transcript of the interview released by the White House.
Obama said the approach would including supporting Mexican President Felipe Calderon's efforts in "a partnership" that also addressed the flow of drug money.
"The drugs are coming north; we're sending funds and guns south -- and as a consequence, these cartels have gained extraordinary power," Obama said in the interview with newspapers including the Albuquerque Journal.
The Obama administration on Wednesday named Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske as a drug czar to lead the U.S. fight against narcotics trafficking.
Some 7,000 people have been killed in violence between Mexican cartels since January 2008. U.S. officials fear the violence is spreading into the southwestern United States, where there have been abductions and execution-style murders tied to the drug trade.
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