MEXICO SEEKS CLOSER LAW ENFORCEMENT TIES WITH WARY U.S.

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
Mr. Fox's ranch on Feb. 16, Mr. Aguilar Zinser said.

He and several other ranking Mexican military, intelligence and law
enforcement officials are to meet on Wednesday in Washington with
Attorney General John Ashcroft; Condoleezza Rice, the national
security adviser; and senior officials of the F.B.I., 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, Mr. 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," Mr. 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 United States 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," Mr.
Aguilar Zinser said, adding, "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."