U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will travel soon to Mexico City, according to a State Department announcement following a meeting between Tillerson and his Mexican counterpart on Wednesday Feb. 8 in Washington, politico.com reported.
Mexican Minister of Foreign Affairs Luis Videgaray told reporters Wednesday after a meeting with Tillerson in Washington that the secretary of state would visit Mexico in the coming weeks, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
In a statement, acting State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Tillerson’s conversation with Videgaray was “constructive” and that the two discussed issues “including law enforcement, migration, and security.”
The relationship between Mexico and President Donald Trump has been a rocky one thus far, with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto cancelling a planned visit to Washington last month over the president’s signature on controversial executive orders, including one to begin the process of constructing a wall along the border between the U.S. and Mexico.
Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray (left), U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. (PHOTO: ADN Sureste)
From day one of his presidential campaign, Trump has pledged that Mexico will pay for the wall, while Peña Nieto has insisted that his nation will not. The Mexican president officially announced the meeting cancellation following a post to Twitter by Trump that read “If Mexico is unwilling to pay for the badly needed wall, then it would be better to cancel the upcoming meeting.” Trump described the decision to cancel the meeting as mutual.
In a phone call between Trump and Peña Nieto that followed the dust-up over the visit, the U.S. president reportedly threatened to send the American military into Mexico to deal with what he called the “bad hombres down there.”
Source: politico.com
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