MEXICO'S IMAGE IS BUFFED AND TARNISHED WITH MILITARY DRUG ARRESTS

MEXICO CITY, April 6 -- The government of President Vicente Fox has
made its first important drug arrests since taking power five months
ago. Unfortunately for Mexican drug enforcement, the three men
arrested were an Army brigadier general, a captain and a lieutenant.

Brig. Gen. Ricardo Martinez, who commanded the 21st Motorized Cavalry
Regiment based in Nuevo Laredo, on the Texas border, and his aides,
Capt. Pedro Maya and Lt. Javier Quevedo, were imprisoned late
Thursday at a military base in Mexico City. The three officers are
charged with having provided protection from arrest in return for
payoffs from cocaine and marijuana traffickers operating along the
gulf coast. They face sentences of up to 40 years if convicted on
drugs and weapons charges.

The Mexican government made the army its front-line force in the drug
war in 1996, after two decades in which drug barons had thoroughly
corrupted state and federal police forces. But the power of drug
money over military officers has marred the army's role from the
start. General Martinez is the sixth Mexican general jailed on
charges of being in the pay of the drug lords since 1997.

General Martinez and his aides were arrested a week after 21
suspects, charged with playing roles in what once was a major cocaine
trafficking organization known as the gulf cartel, were arrested in
the gulf coast state of Tamaulipas. The office of Mexico's secretary
of defense said the three officers were accused of providing
"protection to drug traffickers" from that same group.

In August, Gen. Francisco Quiroz Hermosillo, who had just retired
from the army, and Brig. Gen. Mario Arturo Acosta Chaparro, a
counterinsurgency expert with a reputation for repression and
torture, were arrested on charges that they took bribes to protect
members of the Tijuana-based Arellano Felix drug gang. And in 1997,
Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, then the chief of all of Mexico's
antidrug efforts, was arrested and later convicted of protecting drug
traffickers.

President Fox had promised to withdraw the military from the drug
war. The Constitution bars the military from any role other than
national defense. But Mr. Fox changed his mind after taking office.

The drug cartels have delivered telephone death threats in the past
few months to Mexico's defense minister, Gen. Ricardo Clemente Vega,
and his family, the general said publicly this week. General Vega
said he believed that the threats were the result of continuing
investigations into the links between military officers and some of
Mexico's largest drug organizations.

Today, President Fox, visiting Colombia and its president, Andres
Pastrana, said the two nations would join forces against cocaine
trafficking, and he called the arrests of the military men in Mexico
a small but significant sign of progress.

"Actions like this one, in which a general was arrested," Mr. Fox
said, will "generate confidence, and we will continue with them."