MEXICO'S VALUE AS A TRADE PARTNER TEMPERS DRUG STATUS

MEXICO CITY -- As U.S. drug czar Barry McCaffrey held a joint news
conference with Mexican officials a few months ago to praise Mexico's
efforts in the war on drugs, an American official in the audience winced.

The official is privy to U.S. intelligence on the drug war in Mexico and he
did not agree with McCaffrey's glowing assessment. "We're getting our butts
kicked," the official said.

Every year by March 1, under a 1986 law, the president must tell Congress
whether the 31 countries where illegal drugs are produced or transported
"fully cooperated" in the drug war the previous year.

A failing grade could trigger a cutoff of U.S. aid and earn the offending
country a spot on the list of so-called pariah countries like Afghanistan
and Iran. The administration can, however, waive economic sanctions if doing
so is in the national interest.

The annual ritual is known as certification.

By most measures, 1998 was a dismal year in Mexican efforts to fight drug
trafficking. Seizures of cocaine, marijuana and heroin fell appreciably, and
drug arrests and investigations were down. No major drug lords were
arrested.

Drug Enforcement Administrator Thomas Constantine told senators Wednesday
that Mexico is losing the drug war and that Mexican drug traffickers'
penetration of the U.S. has increased "dramatically." He did not say,
however, that Mexico should be decertified.

Constantine and other U.S. officials say they are frustrated by the Mexican
government's failure to combat official corruption, even within units
specially trained or vetted by U.S. law enforcement, the military and the
Central Intelligence Agency.

Earlier this month, drug and money-laundering charges against the Amezcua
brothers of Guadalajara--the alleged methamphetamine kingpins who were
nabbed by the Mexican police last year--were dismissed.

The Mexican government recently balked at extraditing to the U.S. suspects
ensnared in a U.S. Customs money-laundering investigation.

Mexico threatened to bring U.S. Customs agents to trial for conducting at
least part of the investigation on Mexican soil, supposedly without the
knowledge of Mexican authorities. The Mexicans have since dropped its
threat.

Despite this record, the Clinton administration is expected to certify
Mexico as an ally in the drug war, prompting critics, including U.S. drug
agents, to question the effectiveness of the law.

"It's a sad story," said a former federal drug agent in the U.S. with
extensive knowledge of the drug war in Latin America. "And it doesn't really
matter what the facts are when you have taken and politicized the whole
situation."

Every year, certification comes under attack from critics, including the
Mexican government, as arrogant and hypocritical, given America's appetite
for illegal drugs. Every year, the process exposes the schism between
administration officials, who are among Mexico's biggest cheerleaders, and
frustrated U.S. drug agents, who fight the drug war every day.

On the U.S.-Mexico border, U.S. drug agents insist privately that
certification is a farce, with politics and economics influencing the
decision far more than a country's track record the previous year.

Independent Mexico watchers tend to agree.

George Grayson, an expert on Mexico at the College of William & Mary in
Williamsburg, Va., echoed the sentiments of several analysts who argue that
implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) five years
ago rendered the certification process meaningless in regard to Mexico. In
the view of these analysts, Mexico became too important a trade partner to
be decertified by any U.S. administration.

Last year, trade between the U.S. and Mexico increased 11 percent, to nearly
$175 billion, putting Mexico neck-and-neck with Japan as America's
second-largest trading partner.

"I think the president and his aides realize Mexico is no paragon of virtue
in the drug issue," said Grayson, a professor of government. But, he added,
"You would complicate bilateral relations if you decertified. Better to keep
more lines of communication open. You have bigger fish to fry in Mexico, and
the bigger fish lie in trade, investment and the condition of the Mexican
economy."

U.S. Sen. Paul Coverdell (R-Ga.), a key player in certification, agreed that
"massive economic activity" complicates the process.

"On the one hand, you have data that says (Mexico has) not met the
stipulations of this law," Coverdell, chairman of the Senate Foreign
Relations Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, said Wednesday. "And on
the other hand you have a community that is, at the upper levels, obviously
endeavoring to struggle with this."

Coverdell said he sees no easy solution because of the scope of the drug
problem. American officials estimate that two-thirds of the Colombian
cocaine sold in the U.S. comes through Mexico.

Mexico also is a major producer of marijuana, heroin and methamphetamines.

U.S. officials estimate the drug trade in Mexico generates $30 billion a
year and say as much as one-fourth of the revenue may be used to bribe
officials on both sides of the border.

On a Valentine's Day trip to the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, Clinton
indicated he would inform Congress that Mexico was cooperating in the war on
drugs.

Coincidentally, the Yucatan is one of the hot spots for transshipping
cocaine from Colombia to the U.S. While in Mexico, Clinton aides praised a
plan by President Ernesto Zedillo's administration to spend $500 million for
radar planes, amphibious boats and other equipment to shore up Mexico's
defenses against drug smugglers.

The money would, according to Mexican officials, fund a new national police
force. Skeptics, however, said that if history is any indication,
intelligence gathered by Mexican law enforcement would be passed along to
the drug barons.

They also noted that every year in the weeks leading to certification, the
Mexican government offered a "February surprise," a major drug arrest, for
example, or the unveiling of a large-scale drug program to ensure
certification.

Francisco Ochoa Labastida, the nation's Interior Minister, said Mexico was
kowtowing to no one.

"We do not do things so that we are certified," he said. "We do things like
this, fighting narco-traffickers, because it is an obligation to defend our
young and our country."

Last year, Mexico, according to official figures, spent $770 million on the
drug war. In fiscal 1997, according to the Washington Office on Latin
America, the State and Defense departments spent about $83 million on
counternarcotics efforts in Mexico. Their 1998 budgets dropped that total to
$28 million.

Critics charge that in certifying Mexico, Clinton is ignoring evidence
compiled by U.S. intelligence over the past year and that, in the process,
he is helping to lower the morale of American drug agents in the field.

Last year the authorities in Mexico confiscated 23 metric tons of cocaine,
down from 35 metric tons of cocaine in 1997. Mexican officials say there
were fewer drug seizures last year because a crackdown on drug smugglers
forced them to shift drug routes to the Caribbean.

In 1998, Mexico did not arrest a major drug trafficker. U.S. drug agents
insist their Mexican counterparts know the whereabouts of the drug lords,
pointing to intercepts of satellite and cellular telephone calls available
to the Mexicans, as well as records of international financial transfers.

But corruption is so entrenched, reaching to the highest levels of
government, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, that the
leaders of the drug cartels operate with impunity.

Mexican officials counter that since Zedillo took office in December 1994,
six of the nation's 10 most-wanted narcotraffickers are in prison. Another i
s dead.