MEXICO WANTS U.S. TO SHARE CRIME-FIGHTING INTELLIGENCE

Americans Wary Of Corruption South Of Border

MEXICO CITY -- Mexico is asking the United States to share more
intelligence and ideas for fighting criminal organizations smuggling
guns, drugs and contraband on both sides of the border. If history is a
guide, the United States may be wary.

Mexico wants broad cross-border cooperation in ``a master plan for the
fight against organized crime, drug trafficking and violence,'' said
Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, the national security adviser to President
Vicente Fox.

``President Fox convinced President Bush to try this'' when they met at
Fox's ranch Feb. 16, Aguilar Zinser said.

He and several other ranking Mexican military, intelligence and law
enforcement officials are to meet today in Washington with Attorney
General John Ashcroft; Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser;
and senior officials of the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration,
the State Department and the Pentagon.

Those agencies have ``typically treated the Mexican agencies as
servants,'' said Sergio Aguayo, a professor at the Colegio de Mexico.
``Servants are not allowed to ask questions. They are only supposed to
follow orders. That attitude has to change. But in order for it to
change, there has to be radical improvement in the quality of the
intelligence produced by the Mexican government.''

What Mexico wants, Aguilar Zinser said, is for ``those U.S. institutions
to begin to trust'' Mexico by sharing intelligence, and not to simply
``expect us to be the recipient of unilateral demands.''

But trust has been lacking. Establishing it will require a small
revolution in the way American law enforcement and intelligence services
regard Mexico. Time and again, American officials have worked with
Mexican counterparts who turned out to be corrupt.

The most notorious example was the arrest in 1997 of the Mexican drug
enforcement chief, who was being paid off by the country's biggest
cocaine kingpin at the time.

In reaction, the United States clamped down on its procedures for
sharing intelligence with Mexican law enforcement. At the same time, it
helped set up a new Mexican organized-crime investigative unit, and it
screened and helped train hundreds of Mexican drug-enforcement agents.

What Mexico wants is something bigger, and far beyond drug enforcement:
intelligence cooperation and joint operations against all forms of
organized crime.

It is especially interested in the arrest and prosecution of American
weapons dealers who are arming Mexican crime syndicates, and
investigations of Asian businesses smuggling consumer goods from the
United States into Mexico.

``Mexico is intensely affected by all kinds of things that are shipped
into this country from the United States,'' Aguilar Zinser said.

But American officials, bitten more than once in dealing with Mexico,
may shy away from closer cooperation, even if both presidents think it
might be a good idea.

``This is not going to be a problem of politics,'' said Ana Maria
Salazar, a former U.S. deputy assistant defense secretary, now teaching
at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico. ``This is going to
be a problem of trust.''

And are Mexican institutions trustworthy today? ``Not at all,'' Aguilar
Zinser said. ``We do not expect the United States to begin sharing
information'' with them tomorrow.

Trust ``is not built from day to night,'' he said. ``It does not come
from a series of well-intentioned speeches by public officials. Trust
comes from deeds.''