MEXICO CHARGES OFFICERS WITH AIDING TRAFFICKERS

President Fox, Other Official Say Arrests Show Government Is Resolved To
Fight Drug Corruption

MEXICO CITY -- 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 Mart(acu)nez, 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 allegations of drug-money connections
to military officers have marred the army's role from the start.
Mart(acu)nez is the sixth Mexican general jailed on charges of being in the
pay of the drug lords since 1997.

Mart(acu)nez 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, 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 anti-drug efforts, was
arrested and later convicted of protecting drug traffickers.

Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha, himself a former military
prosecutor, denied that the latest arrests might hurt the army's morale and
image. "I think it is strengthened when decisions like this are taken," he
said.

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

Mexico's defense minister, Gen. Ricardo Clemente Vega, said publicly this
week that the drug cartels had delivered telephone death threats in the
past few months to him and his family. 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.

Friday, 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," Fox said, will
"generate confidence, and we will continue with them."