WASHINGTON— Are we our neighbor’s keeper? This is the question for U.S. lawmakers debating the new anti-drug aid package to Mexico.

About 90 percent of the cocaine consumed in the United States enters through Mexico, according to the U.S. Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.

The Merida Initiative, dubbed Plan Mexico, is projected to pour $1.4 billion into Mexican military and police training, intelligence gathering and equipment to combat drug cartels. It is slated to be considered by the House Foreign Affairs Committee next week.

For the first time there is “real political will” from the Mexican side, said policy makers at a conference sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute on Thursday.

 As evidence, many cited that President Felipe Calderon began an offensive against the Mexican cartels within his first few weeks in office. A record number of cocaine shipments have been seized in Mexico this year, said Ted Brennan a longtime policy adviser on Capitol Hill.

“It’s very hard to quantify political will,” said Robert Charles, who has worked in counter-narcotics over the last 20 years, “but if you see it, you should reward it.”

In debating the $1.4 billion outlay, Charles said lawmakers should focus on how the aid package supports Mexican rule of law and rewards political will.

The aid is not all going to the Mexican military, said Roberta S. Jacobson of the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs at the State Department. The “balanced package” would include border security, improving databases, institution building and reducing the flow of arms southward.

The majority of the aid is going to civilian agencies, Jacobson said, and it will take time.

“There is no silver bullet,” said Armand Peschard-Sverdrup, the CEO of a consultant group focused on Mexico. He emphasized that $1.4 billion was not going to solve all of Mexico’s security problems.

Participants in the Washington conference emphasized the need for a long-term outlook and consistency in policy.

“Once you start, you can’t stop,” Brennan added. “You need to treat the infection with the full course of antibiotics.”

“It’s about strengthening Mexican institutions,” Peschard-Sverdrup said,referring to the history of Mexican corruption at the highest levels and the need to push for police professionalism there. “It’s in the best interest of the U.S.”

Critics of the plan question how far the U.S. should extend its influence in Mexico.

But Peschard-Sverdrup said the plan would be carried out consistent with Mexican President Calderon’s own initiatives.

The stakes in border communities like Tijuana and Nuevo Laredo are particularly high. More than 2,600 Mexican deaths have been attributed to drug-related violence this year. Mexico is well known for being the second most dangerous place in the world for journalists after Iraq.

The Nuevo Laredo chief of police was gunned down six hours after he promised to take on the cartels, said Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, who represent the district across the Rio Grande from the Mexican city.

The key concerns for Congress will be accountability- where the money is going and how to ensure human rights are protected, Cuellar who supports the plan, said.

Political difficulties could arise because the Bush administration has attached the plan to a bill providing more money for the war in Iraq.

The plan isn’t expected to reach a vote until the spring, Cuellar explained.

Other legislators are disappointed the Bush administration devised the plan without consulting them, said a spokesman for Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y. the chairman of western hemisphere subcommittee.

Critics say U.S.-Mexican history should be taken into account when the funding package is debated. Joy Olson, of the Washington Office on Latin America, warned that Calderon is not the first Mexican president to promise to use the military to fight drug traffickers.

And the military is not immune from corruption. An elite unit created by the U.S.-Mexico counter-drug partnership was co-opted  by the Gulf Cartel, a drug gang,  in the late 1990s to form its own illicit  enforcement arm know as “Zetas”  Olson’s reported to the subcommittee.