Mexican president has rejected any “intervention” from the US after Donald Trump promised he would designate the country’s drug cartels as terrorist organizations.

"Cooperation, yes, intervention, no" Manuel Lopez Obrador responded to US President’s earlier comments that he had been working on branding the cartels as terrorist organizations over the last 90 days.

Trump revealed his plans when Bill O’Reilly, a conservative media personality, asked him if he was “going to designate those cartels in Mexico as terror groups and start hitting them with drones" in an interview posted on his personal website on Tuesday.

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"I don't want to say what I'm going to do, but they will be designated," Trump answered. The US president called on war on cartels earlier this month to “wipe them off the face of the earth” after nine people with dual US-Mexican citizenship, including two babies, were brutally murdered by cartel gunmen.

As Trump’s comments were typically vague, Mexican officials called for immediate consultations to "to understand the meaning and scope of the remarks." Designating cartels as terrorist organization means that financial institutions must immediately block and report any funds connected to the group and citizens can’t support its members, but also makes operations to kill the leaders possible as it was done with Al-Qaeda and Islamic State (IS) heads.

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Although Mexico relied on US aid and assistance through its war on drugs that claimed thousands of lives since its launch in 2006, the president’s statements show the country is less than willing to have American special operatives on its soil. Lopez Obrador was elected in 2018 on a “strategy for peace” and promises of amnesty to non-violent cartel members. Yet, there has been little progress.

In Washington, Republican lawmakers already mulled legislation to designate cartels as terrorist organizations or use other laws, like Global Magnitsky Act, that might put pressure on Mexican government to change its policy.

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