U.S. will seek to lift ban on Myanmar imports, Clinton announces

NEW YORK -- The Obama administration will seek to lift the U.S. ban on imported products from Myanmar, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced Wednesday at the beginning of a meeting with Myanmar President Thein Sein.

The step would wipe out the biggest remaining economic restrictions the U.S. maintains on the changing country, the latest in a series of incremental moves the U.S. has taken to reward Myanmar.

"In recognition of the continued progress toward reform and in response to requests from both the government and the opposition, the United States is taking the next step in normalizing our commercial relationship,” Clinton said.

There were no immediate details about how or when the restrictions would be lifted. Although Congress renewed the import ban in August, it also allowed for President Obama to waive the restrictions.

A senior administration official told reporters that the White House would consult Congress on how to lift the ban, including whether to end restrictions for all products at once or lift bans on categories one by one. Trade between the U.S. and Myanmar was not especially high in dollar value, the official said, and included hardwoods, gems and textiles.

The announced move would be an economic boon for Myanmar, also known as Burma, and gives its president “a major boost,” said Suzanne DiMaggio, vice president of global policy programs at the Asia Society. The U.S. action "will go a long way toward muffling critics and hard-liners at home.” 

As Myanmar has taken steps toward reform, freeing hundreds of political prisoners and allowing opposition candidates such as democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi to stand for election, the U.S. has loosened its restrictions on the long-isolated nation, easing most economic sanctions and opening up investment.

The long-standing ban on products made in Myanmar, first put in place nine years ago, dealt a major blow to the Myanmar garment industry, which once sent nearly half of its products to the U.S. More than 100 garment factories were shuttered and at least 50,000 jobs lost, the State Department reported in 2004.

Suu Kyi had urged the U.S. to drop the ban, one in a host of sanctions she had once supported, saying her country should no longer depend on such pressure to maintain its momentum toward democracy. Experts said her supportive statements, made before Thein Sein visited this week, paved the way for the sensitive move.

“It’s a little weird to support sanctions when the people you were supposedly supporting,” Suu Kyi and others in the democracy movement, “don’t support them anymore,” said Joshua Kurlantzick, a Southeast Asia fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

But other activists and ethnic minorities at odds with the government and have been loath to lose the leverage over Myanmar, which still faces serious obstacles on its road to reform.

World of woe, little hope of relief, await U.N. General Assembly

When 120 world leaders and their entourages gather at the United Nations this week, the woes of the world will be onstage in all their tragic detail: a civil war in Syria, the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, reignited ethnic conflicts in Africa and uphill battles against poverty and global warming.

What is likely to be in short supply at the General Assembly are fresh ideas for resolving the kaleidoscope of crises afflicting the planet. The U.N. Security Council has been hamstrung by internal conflicts among its permanent members in devising effective intervention in the Syrian bloodletting, and a colossal conference on sustainable development hosted by the world body three months ago was widely viewed as unproductive.

The Middle East and its myriad security challenges are expected to dominate the marathon of speeches beginning Tuesday, especially against the backdrop of worldwide Muslim outrage over an amateur video made by U.S.-based Christian zealots depicting the Prophet Muhammad as vile and sadistic.

Violent protests over the 14-minute film clip flared earlier this month after a version of "The Innocence of Muslims" was dubbed into Arabic and posted on YouTube. Conservative Islamists, some backed by Al Qaeda-aligned holy warriors, have attacked U.S. and other Western embassies and businesses across the Islamic crescent spanning the Middle East, Africa and South Asia. In the worst of the violence on Sept. 11, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, was killed along with three other Americans at the consulate in Benghazi. On Friday, the Muslim sabbath, enraged demonstrators clashed with police in Pakistan, killing at least 18 people.

U.S. to remove Iranian group Mujahedin Khalq from terrorist list

WASHINGTON -- The small but influential Iranian exile group Mujahedin Khalq will be removed from the U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations, a U.S. official said Friday, following a high-priced lobbying campaign claiming the controversial group had renounced violence.

The group’s advocates on Capitol Hill welcomed the State Department decision, which was conveyed to Congress in a classified letter. But outside experts warned that legitimizing an organization that carried out deadly attacks in Iran years ago could give Tehran a propaganda boost as Washington and its allies try to curb Iran’s nuclear program.

Members of the group, known as the MEK, portray themselves as Iran’s main political opposition, but they have little apparent support in Iran. The MEK has been based in Iraq since the early 1980s, when it sided with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in an  eight-year war that killed hundreds of thousands of Iranians. It has since drawn scrutiny for its cult-like practices, including mandatory celibacy, forced labor and restrictions on leaving the group.

The U.S. government added the MEK to its terrorist organization list in 1997, but members were disarmed by U.S. forces after the 2003 Iraq invasion of Iraq.

The MEK filed a lawsuit challenging the terrorist designation, and a federal court ruled that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton must decide by Oct. 1 whether to remove the group from the list. State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland declined to discuss the decision.  

“We anticipate being able to make a public announcement about it sometime before Oct. 1,” Nuland said.

The apparent resolution comes six days after the MEK abandoned a former military base in eastern Iraq to avert a showdown with Iraqi authorities, who view the group as a dangerous nuisance.

In recent years, it has enlisted Washington luminaries in both parties to speak on its behalf or appear at rallies. Among them are former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Democratic Party leader Howard Dean, former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, former FBI Director Louis Freeh and President Obama’s  former national security advisor, James L. Jones.

Some of the officials reportedly were paid tens of thousands of dollars in fees. The group also spent considerable sums on full-page newspaper advertisements and other media.

Critics of the MEK faulted the Obama administration for bowing to the lobbying effort, warning that the appearance of U.S. support for a group that many Iranians view as traitorous could weaken Iran’s pro-democracy movement. Some current and former U.S. officials have called for arming the MEK to conduct attacks against Iran, which experts say could tip the United States and Iran closer to war.

“It’s a gift to [Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei,” Iran’s supreme leader, said Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council, a Washington-based nonprofit advocacy group that opposes the government in Tehran.

“At a moment when the United States is trying to put pressure on the Iranian regime through sanctions, and have that economic hardship for the people translate into them putting pressure on their own government, that policy is undermined if the balance of public anger is directed to the U.S. rather than the regime itself,” Parsi said.

According to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity before the formal announcement, Clinton approved the delisting after the last MEK members vacated Camp Ashraf, their longtime encampment in eastern Iraq, on Sept. 16. Iraq’s government had vowed to close Ashraf, but MEK members repeatedly stalled, prompting fear of bloodshed if Iraqi soldiers tried to close the camp by force.

The group is at a temporary camp near the Baghdad airport awaiting resettlement abroad.

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Photo: Members of the Mujahedin Khalq hold banners during a tour by foreign diplomats in Iraq on  Sept. 11, 2012.  Credit: Hadi Mizban / Associated Press 

Europe tackles torture allegations that were swept aside in U.S.

When CIA agents nabbed an Egyptian cleric on the streets of Milan, Italy,  and whisked him off for interrogation in a country that turned a blind eye to torture, they violated international law and were justly sentenced to prison, Italy's highest court has ruled in a landmark case against the U.S. counter-terrorism tactic known as "extraordinary rendition."

The final judgment by Italy's Court of Cassation on Wednesday upheld the convictions of 23 American operatives for their roles in the 2003 abduction of Hassan Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar. Their five- and seven-year prison terms meted out by a lower court three years ago were not only upheld but extended by two years, although it appeared unlikely that  any of the convicted U.S. operatives would be surrendered to serve their time.

Human rights advocates concede that  the legal judgment against rendition is mostly symbolic. Unless Italy seeks extradition -- something Washington has been fighting fiercely, leaked diplomatic cables suggest -- the only punishment the Americans are likely to face is the threat of arrest if they travel to Europe or nations elsewhere that might elect to fulfill commitments under the U.N. Convention Against Torture.

Despite the limited reach of the Italian court's decision, rights advocates have applauded the ruling as evidence that European courts are willing to bring to justice those who violate the law in the so-called war on terror, even though the U.S. government has declined to do so.

Milan prosecutor Armando Spataro, who brought the case against the Americans and a few Italian intelligence agents complicit in Nasr's abduction, declared that the high court ruling is a definitive judgment that rendition is "incompatible with democracy." He said a government decision on whether to seek extradition wouldn't be expected until the high court issues its full written opinion, which could take two to three more months.

The CIA did not respond to a call and email from The Times asking for comment on the Italian court ruling and whether the agency is advising the convicted Americans against foreign travel.

The United States has an extradition treaty with Italy, and any request for Washington to deliver the Americans to serve their prison terms would be difficult for the U.S. government to ignore, said former Air Force Col. Morris Davis, a former chief prosecutor at the Guantanamo Bay war-crimes tribunal who was forced to retire after criticizing U.S. handling of terrorism suspects.

"If the Italians were to submit an extradition request, there would be no legal basis for us not to comply," Davis said. "I’m sure there’ll be a lot of behind-the-scenes diplomatic wrangling on the Italian government not to submit the request."

The Italian case isn't the only one threatening to spotlight legal breaches by American agents since Sept. 11, Davis said. He pointed out that most of the legal actions abroad in defiance of the Obama administration's decision to "look forward, not back" on counter-terrorism excesses are coming from allied countries, "not Iran or Cuba or Venezuela."

A Spanish judge in 2009 ordered an investigation of torture allegations at Guantanamo Bay. Polish authorities are demanding full disclosure of the former government's complicity in CIA detention and interrogation of rendition subjects at a remote secret prison there. The British government has paid compensation to citizens and legal residents released after abusive CIA interrogations, including plaintiffs whose cases were thrown out of U.S. courts when the George W.  Bush and Obama administrations claimed that to try them would expose "state secrets." In Canada, the government has apologized to and compensated Maher Arar, a citizen nabbed by U.S. agents while traveling home from Tunisia in 2002 and sent to Syria for "enhanced interrogation."

Nasr, an Egyptian-born imam, was suspected of recruiting men from his Milan mosque to fight U.S. and other foreign troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, the impetus for his Feb. 17, 2003, abduction and delivery to a secret interrogation site in his homeland. He said he was beaten, bound and blindfolded for months in a cold cell and subjected to electrical shocks to his genitals while being questioned.

A lower Italian court found the 23 Americans guilty in 2009 and sentenced former Milan CIA station chief Robert Seldon Lady to seven years in prison and the others to five years' detention. The high court stiffened those sentences by two years and sent back to the lower court several cases against Italian agents involved in the Nasr rendition that had been dismissed on immunity claims.

While the Italian judiciary, like that of the United States, has no power to enforce its rulings if the government fails to request extradition, the rendition judgment serves a powerful symbolic purpose in branding those who would violate laws against torture as criminals, said Jamil Dakwar, director of the human rights program of the American Civil Liberties Union. He pointed out an array of other legal challenges to rendition and warrantless detention brought by former terrorism suspects that are making their way through foreign and multinational courts.

The Italian ruling this week, Dakwar said, "sent a strong message that if the United States fails to hold accountable its own officials for human rights violations that European countries will do so."

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Photo: A police officer stands guard at the Milan trial of 23 Americans involved in the 2003 abduction of an Egyptian cleric. European and international courts are prosecuting cases of alleged torture of terrorism suspects despite the U.S. government's policy against exposing its counter-terrorism practices to the judgment of the courts. Credit: Giuseppe Cacace / AFP/Getty Images

Insert: Egyptian-born cleric  Hassan Osama Nasr, known as Abu Omar, says he was kidnapped in Milan and tortured in an Egyptian prison. Credit: Amr Nabil / Associated Press

Panetta lifts ban on New Zealand naval ships

AUCKLAND, New Zealand -- Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said Friday that New Zealand naval ships would be allowed to dock at U.S. bases, lifting a 26-year-old ban.

The decision, announced by Panetta at a news conference, eases the long-running dispute between the two countries over New Zealand's refusal to allow U.S. warships carrying nuclear weapons or using nuclear power into its ports.

The U.S. move is an overture to New Zealand at a time when the Pentagon is rebuilding military relations in the region, in part to counter China's growing clout in the South Pacific.

But there are few signs that New Zealand will reciprocate by easing its anti-nuclear law to allow a return of U.S. Navy and Coast Guard ships to its ports.

"While we acknowledge that our countries continue to have differences of opinion in some limited areas ... we are embarking on a new course that will not let these differences stand in the way of greater engagement on security issues," Panetta said.

Asked whether the decision to give New Zealand access to American bases could lead to a resumption of U.S. Navy ship calls in New Zealand, Panetta said, "Let's see where it takes us."

Panetta meets Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing

BEIJING -- Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta held talks Wednesday with Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, who had dropped out of sight for several weeks, leading to speculation that he had health problems or was involved in a leadership struggle.

A scheduled meeting between Xi and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on her visit to Beijing this month was canceled without explanation.

Reporters were briefly allowed into the vast meeting room where Xi and Panetta met.

The two sat in overstuffed armchairs, flanked by aides sitting along the walls. Smiling and looking vigorous, Xi greeted guests in the room.

"It is a great pleasure for me to see you again," Xi told Panetta. "I think [the visit] will be very successful in advancing" U.S.-Chinese relations.

Pentagon officials were informed only in the last week that Panetta would be able to see Xi, who is believed to support closer ties with the U.S., during the Defense secretary's three-day visit to China. 

The mystery surrounding Xi's disappearance illustrated how little the U.S. knows about China's secretive leadership and its internal maneuverings.

Panetta on Tuesday was taken to Zhongnanhai, a walled compound used by China's leaders in Beijing, for talks with other top national security officials. 

Xi is considered likely to take over as China's president this year. His appearance with Panetta at the Great Hall of the People was an indication that his succession is on track despite his disappearance. 

The Great Hall of the People is a few hundred yards from the mausoleum where Chairman Mao Tse-tung's corpse is kept on public view.

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Photo: A U.S. delegation led by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, second right, meets with Chinese officials in Beijing on Tuesday. Credit: Larry Downing / Associated Press

Russia puts an end to USAID activities in the country

Russia is putting a stop to the United States aid agency operating in the country after a two-decade presence in Moscow, the U.S. State Department said Tuesday, a decision seen by critics as a swipe at American support for Russian civil society groups that have criticized the government.

Though State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland on Tuesday shied away from speaking for the Russians, she said the reasons seemed to be tied to “their sense that they don’t need this anymore.”

The United States has spent about $2.7 billion on its U.S. Agency for International Development program in Russia since the end of the Soviet Union, with about $50 million budgeted for this fiscal year, Nuland said.

Its programs have included tackling tuberculosis, helping disadvantaged youths and aiding election watchdogs and human rights groups,  work that has been viewed with suspicion by President Vladimir Putin. The U.S. got an official notice of the Russian decision last week, Nuland told reporters.

“While USAID’s physical presence in Russia will come to an end, we remain committed to supporting democracy, human rights and the development of a more robust civil society in Russia and look forward to continuing our cooperation with Russian non-governmental organizations,” Nuland said Tuesday.

The decision to halt USAID activities in Russia comes at a time when the Russian government has stoked suspicion of foreign groups. In July, Russian lawmakers passed a bill that requires groups that receive foreign funding to register as “foreign agents,” a step critics said was meant to tar activists so they wouldn’t accept foreign money. The free-speech group Freedom House, headquartered in the U.S., said the Russian move could be “a demoralizing and devastating blow to an increasingly embattled Russian civil society.”

“This decision sets a dangerous precedent and suggests that U.S. support for civil society ends when repressive governments apply pressure,” Freedom House President David J. Kramer said in a statement.

In U.S. visit, Suu Kyi urges end to all economic sanctions

WASHINGTON -- Myanmar’s pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, began her first visit to the United States in four decades by urging Washington to begin lifting remaining economic sanctions, which she credited for helping pressure the authoritarian government to allow vastly greater freedoms.

“I think our people must start to take responsibility for our own destiny,” Suu Kyi said to a packed auditorium at the U.S. Institute of Peace after she met Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton at the State Department. “We should not depend on U.S. sanctions to keep up the momentum for democracy.”

Clinton warmly introduced and embraced Suu Kyi before the speech, her first public appearance on a 17-day visit to the United States.

Suu Kyi’s release from 15 years under house arrest in November 2010, and her election in April to parliament, were key factors in the White House decision to begin to ease unilateral sanctions in May and to step up engagement with the nominally civilian government.

Suu Kyi previously had urged the Obama administration to wait for signs that the new rulers of Myanmar, also known as Burma, were fully committed to democratic reforms. The White House, which has already allowed U.S. companies to resume investing in Myanmar, is now weighing whether to lift a ban on imports.

That time has now come, the Nobel laureate said in a soft, lilting voice.

“We are not yet at the end of our struggle,” she said. “But we are getting there. We have passed the first hurdle. There are many more hurdles to go.”

She praised the Myanmar government for releasing several hundred prisoners this week, including 90 who she said were political prisoners. “By our count, about 200 political prisoners remain,” she said. “All must be released.”

She said her nation, one of the poorest in Asia, needs “practical help” from the U.S. “We need great help with education, with health and with building up democratic institutions,” she said. 

On the issue of whether to call her country Burma, as it was traditionally known, or Myanmar, its official new name, she said, “There are people who refer to Burma as Myanmar, and it is entirely a matter of choice,” she said. 

In her introduction, Clinton repeated U.S. concerns about the plight of political prisoners in the country and violence against ethnic groups. “The process of reform must continue,” she said.

Suu Kyi will go to Capitol Hill to receive the Congressional Gold Medal, which she was awarded in absentia in 2008, when she was still under house arrest, and she is expected to visit the White House. She is also scheduled to visit New York, the Midwest and California in a trip aimed at making contacts that were impossible during her long captivity.

Her itinerary has been arranged to avoid upstaging Myanmar President Thein Sein, who will meet with Clinton after he arrives in New York next week for the annual United Nations General Assembly. Thein Sein has overseen the country’s liberalization, but democracy advocates remain uncertain how far he will go.

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Photo: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton welcomes Myanmar pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington. Credit: Olivier Douliery / MCT

 

 

 

 

Envisioning a post-Assad Syria as civil war grinds on

With no end in sight for the bloody fratricide ravaging Syria, and with the world's most powerful nations bitterly divided over what to do next, U.S. and European diplomats have redirected their efforts from trying to halt the civil war to planning for a new Syria once it is over.

The blueprints emerging are necessarily vague, given that no one yet knows how or when Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime will fall or what constellation of political opponents will replace it. The proposals also lack any common strategy, reflecting discordant views among advocates of a free Syria on how best to aid the outgunned rebels. Washington is more wary than its allies of sending arms that could end up in the hands of Al Qaeda and other Islamic militants who have infiltrated the civil war to gain a new foothold in the Middle East.

French President Francois Hollande this week called on rebel factions to cobble together a transitional government that the international community can officially recognize and work with. But U.S. diplomats and political analysts argue that Assad's opponents are too fractious to put forward a united front or cohesive strategy for the war's end game. And with President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney equally loath to endorse bolder action on Syria -- fearing another costly, faraway conflict -- responsibility for contingency planning has fallen to academia instead of the Pentagon.

On Tuesday, the United States Institute of Peace issued "The Day After" plan for a post-Assad Syria. The 133-page statement of goals and principles for a new Syria was six months in the making. It was produced by 45 Syrian opposition figures brought together by the State Department-funded institute's Middle East experts and partners from the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. It is long on institution-building wonk-speak and short on how the opposition is supposed to get to the post-Assad era. But analysts hailed it as a worthy undertaking even as government and rebel forces are mired in protracted battles to control key areas of Damascus and Aleppo.

No representatives of the Free Syrian Army fighting the regime were party to the post-Assad project, said Steven Heydemann, a senior advisor on Middle East initiatives who coordinated the talks among Syrian exiles, defectors and regime opponents who managed to travel abroad or participate via video linkup.

"The group very sensibly recognized there was no way to anticipate how the transition would happen," instead focusing on identifying the challenges that would confront the next leadership whether Assad flees, negotiates an exit or is deposed in a palace coup, Heydemann said. However the Assad dynasty ends, he noted, Syrians will have to grapple with divisive questions on how to treat those accused of war crimes, deter revenge killings and get the economy and social services back in working order.

While the United States is holding firm to its policy of providing only nonlethal aid to the rebels, Heydemann said, Washington could play a more effective role in coordinating other outside support. He pointed to the mounting incidents of Islamic extremists waging strikes against the Assad regime for their own purposes and weaponry coming in from autocratic supporters like Qatar and Saudi Arabia as giving "a Wild West quality" to help for the underdog rebels.

"The United States is very concerned that support from outside for elements of the Syrian opposition not lead to strengthening of Al Qaeda or Islamic fundamentalist forces that becomes problematic in the postwar process," said Charles Ries, a career diplomat heading Rand Corp.'s Center for Middle East Public Policy.  "But our reluctance [to supply arms] has paradoxically caused the division of the Syrian opposition and has encouraged those Islamist elements to find their own sources of support and influence."

The task eluding the United States and its allies is uniting the disparate opposition forces inside and outside Syria into a cohesive leadership that they can support and ratchet up the pressure on Assad, Ries said. 

Bilal Y. Saab, a Syria expert at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, shares other analysts' concerns that Islamic militants are filling the vacuum left by a hands-off U.S. policy toward the rebels. But it would be "ill-advised," he said, for the United States to recognize a transitional government that isn't broadly inclusive of the myriad ethnic, sectarian, religious and political factions in Syria.

"This administration is nowhere near doing that," Saab said of the prospects for a representative rebel leadership.

That said, initiatives like "The Day After" are laudable for keeping the Syrian opposition forces and their allies focused on the daunting challenges of building a stable nation once the civil war ends, Saab said.

"This is the most comprehensive effort by a U.S. entity to date to think about scenarios for after Assad," Saab said of the peace institute project. "It's not putting the cart before the horse."

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Photo: A rebel supporter treads on posters of Syrian President Bashar Assad lining the floor of a Free Syrian Army office in the town of Tal Rifaat, near Aleppo. Fighting has ground into a bloody impasse as international mediators differ on how to end the 17-month-old conflict. In Washington, the U.S. presidential election has relegated the Syrian civil war  to the diplomatic sidelines. Credit: Phil Moore / AFP/Getty Images

Mexican federal police fire on U.S. officials' vehicle, injuring two

 

MEXICO CITY -- Two U.S. government employees were injured Friday when their truck was fired upon by Mexican federal police in a bizarre incident whose details, as provided by Mexican authorities, are far from clear, leaving open the possibility of a tragedy sparked by a case of mistaken identity.

The U.S. State Department issued a statement Friday saying the two embassy employees were attacked by "unknown assailants" and were in stable condition at a local hospital. The State Department statement did not mention the federal police, but the Mexican Naval Ministry, in a statement, said that the Americans' vehicle had indeed taken police fire.

According to the navy´s statement, the episode began at 8 a.m. near a highway linking the Mexican capital with the popular tourist destination of Cuernavaca. The Americans, accompanied by a Mexican naval official, were on a dirt road on their way to visit a military facility when they encountered a vehicle whose passengers displayed firearms. When the driver of the Americans'  truck tried to evade them, the armed men opened fire.

Moments later, the statement says, three other vehicles joined the chase, also shooting at the Americans' truck.

The statement acknowledges that federal police fired on the Americans' truck, but it does not specify whether the assailants in the cars were in fact members of the federal police force. Police officials declined to comment when contacted by The Times.

Mexico's federal police force has long been plagued with disturbing incidents of corruption, despite recent efforts by outgoing President Felipe Calderon to clean it up. The most recent high-profile incident occurred in late June, when members of the force confronted a group of allegedly corrupt fellow officers in the Mexico City airport, sparking a gun battle that left three officers dead.

At the same time, federal police are being asked to fight the powerful drug cartels that have taken hold in such states as Morelos, south of Mexico City, where Friday's incident occurred. 

Morelos has been particularly unstable since the 2009 slaying of drug kingpin Arturo Beltran Leyva after a shootout with the Mexican military in Cuernavaca, the Morelian capital and a popular destination for foreign tourists and Mexico City residents. Much of the violence that has shaken Morelos is presumed to have been motivated by lower-level drug lords fighting to fill the power vacuum left by Beltran Leyva.

U.S. officials did not divulge the Americans' job description. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said U.S. officials were "working with Mexican authorities to investigate" the incident.

Mexican newspapers reported that the Americans' truck, a Toyota SUV bearing diplomatic plates issued by the Mexican government, had been hit by at least 30 bullets.

The United States' consular mission in Mexico is the world´s largest, and the two countries have exhibited unprecedented cooperation in fighting the Mexican drug cartels in recent years. Attacks on U.S. personnel in the country are rare but not unprecedented.

In February 2011, a pair of U.S. immigration agents traveling in an SUV in the central Mexican state of San Luis Potosi were attacked by drug cartel members. One of the agents was injured by gunfire and the other, Jaime Zapata, was killed. A consular employee and her husband were shot and killed in the city of Juarez in 2010.

 --Richard Fausset

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Photo: An armored U.S. Embassy vehicle is checked by Mexican military personnel after it was attacked on the highway leading to the city of Cuernavaca on Friday, Aug. 24, 2012. Two U.S. government employees were shot and wounded in the attack. Credit: Alexandre Meneghini / Associated Press