WASHINGTON (Reuters) – US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will lead a top-level delegation to Mexico on March 23 to discuss efforts to fight drug cartels, 10 days after three people linked to a US consulate were killed in a border city.

State Department spokesman PJ Crowley said Clinton would be accompanied by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair as well as other senior national security officials.

They will be meeting to discuss the US Merida Initiative, a 2007 plan to give Mexico $1.4 billion to help fight the country’s powerful drug cartels. Crowley said the meeting had been in preparation for several months.

Two Americans and one Mexican linked to the US consulate in Ciudad Juarez, just over the border from El Paso, Texas, were killed on Saturday. The killings were part of a surge in drug-related violence along the US-Mexican border.