US Ambassador to Mexico Quits Over Cables Flap

(Newser) – WikiLeaks has toppled its highest-ranking US official yet—the US ambassador to Mexico, Carlos Pascual. In diplomatic cables, Pascual called Mexico's police and armed forces corrupt, risk averse, inefficient, and "reliant on the United States for leads and operations," which really didn't sit well with Mexico's conservative, nationalist president Felipe Calderon, reports the Wall Street Journal. Pascual is the first US diplomat on a foreign posting to resign because of WikiLeaks revelations.

Hillary Clinton praised Pascual as the "architect and advocate" of US-Mexico relations, and said she accepted his resignation with "great reluctance." But the resignation, which came after a month of Calderon lambasting Pascual in the press, underscores unraveling relations between the two neighbors as grinding drug violence takes its toll. "Despite all the cooperation between the two governments, there is an underlying strain and a lot of frustration that violence is on the increase, and not on the decrease," says the head of a DC think tank.