Obama to visit Mexico in April, Mexican government says

MEXICO CITY, Mexico (CNN) - U.S. President Barack Obama will visit
Mexico on April 16-17, the Mexican government has announced.

The White House has not yet announced the trip.

Obama and Mexican President Felipe Calderon will hold "frank and
respectful" talks about organized crime, border security and free trade
differences, the Mexican president said Wednesday on his Web page.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is scheduled to visit Mexico next
week.

The visits by Clinton and Obama come amid an unrelenting drug war in
Mexico that has spilled into the United States and a trade dispute - Mexico
recently imposed tariffs on about 90 U.S. goods in retaliation for the United
States failing to follow through on a pledge to allow Mexican trucks into the
country with few restrictions.

Calderon has been pushing back against U.S. critics of violence by drug
cartels that killed about 6,500 people in Mexico last year. In speeches and
other recent comments, the Mexican president has said the United States must
also take responsibility because much of the demand for drugs and most of the
weapons used by narcotraffickers come from the United States.

A Mexican senator said Wednesday that Obama's visit will help dispel the
notion that Mexico is "a failed state."

"That is not President Barack Obama's thinking nor his government's
position," Luis Alberto Villarreal was quoted as saying on the government-run
Notimex news agency.

Some U.S. senators, he said, admit the United States' failures in the war
on narcotrafficking.

Obama's visit to Mexico will come as he and 33 other leaders from the
Western Hemisphere meet April 17-19 in Trinidad and Tobago for the Fifth Summit
of the Americas.

Obama and Calderon met in Washington on January 12, before the U.S.
leader took office.