MEXICO'S EXTRADITIONS MAKE A POINT

President Calderon could gain credibility at home and with the U.S.
for turning over drug-trade leaders.

MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's decision to extradite 10 leaders of its most
powerful drug-trafficking organizations to the U.S. is a landmark
event that will boost the fortunes of new President Felipe Calderon,
though the long-term effect on the drug business remains uncertain,
Mexican analysts and U.S. officials said Saturday.

The extraditions took place late Friday night, just seven weeks after
Calderon took office, but after several years of legal and diplomatic
wrangling by officials on both sides of the border.

"The actions overnight by the Mexican government are unprecedented in
their scope and importance," U.S. Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales said
in a statement Saturday. "Never before has the United States received
from Mexico such a large number of major drug defendants and other
criminals for prosecution in this country."

In all, Mexican authorities extradited 15 people. The most prominent
was Osiel Cardenas, who was reputed to have been running the Gulf
cartel from his cell at the maximum-security La Palma prison since
his arrest in 2003.

A federal grand jury in Texas indicted Cardenas in 1999 on
drug-trafficking and assault charges. The Bush administration singled
him out for special treatment in 2001 under the Foreign Narcotics
Kingpin Designation Act, which allows the government to freeze the
assets of those who do business with drug lords and their families.

Three others extradited late Friday were on the White House kingpin
list, including Hector Palma, said to be the top lieutenant of
Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, leader of the Sinaloa cartel. Had he not
escaped from a Mexican prison in 2001, Guzman too might have been
extradited Friday.

Palma is a colorful figure who, it has been said, once paid $40
million in annual protection fees to the Guadalajara municipal
police. When he was arrested in 1999 after his small plane crashed,
he had in his possession a handgun encrusted with diamonds and emeralds.

The other two on the kingpin list extradited were Ismael Higuera
Guerrero and Gilberto Higuera Guerrero, brothers and bosses in the
Arellano Felix cartel, based in Tijuana.

Even inside their Mexican prisons, the kingpins were known for
outrageous behavior. Cardenas treated 17,000 people to a Day of the
Child party at a baseball stadium in the border city of Reynosa last year.

Columnist Ricardo Aleman wrote in the Mexico City newspaper El
Universal that Cardenas was deliberately making the government of
then-President Vicente Fox look ridiculous.

"In spite of being locked up in the most secure and strict of
Mexico's prisons, the head of the cartel does what he wants," Aleman
wrote last May. "It seems to confirm the fact that the most powerful
cartels and criminal groups are beyond the control of the state."

Widespread corruption in the prison system made it nearly impossible
for Mexican officials to control the drug bosses, said Jorge Chabat,
an expert on the drug trade.

"Having them out of Mexico is one less headache for the Mexican
government," Chabat said. The extraditions, coming on the heels of
Calderon's decision to send federal troops to combat drug trafficking
in Baja California and the southern states of Michoacan and Guerrero,
add to the sense that the new president is trying to take charge of a
seemingly intractable problem.

"We are determined not to tolerate any defiance to the authority of
the state," Calderon said Friday.

The extraditions give Calderon increased credibility as he deals with
the U.S. on contentious issues, including immigration reform and
legislation approved last year in Washington to tighten the
U.S.-Mexican border.

As well, the extraditions in effect end the kingpins' influence over
the vast drug-trafficking organizations, although new leaders are
almost certain to emerge. "It's like any big business," Chabat said.
"If the CEO resigns, then a new CEO takes his place."

U.S. and Mexican officials say the drug-trafficking organizations are
huge businesses in which no individual knows more than a handful of
others -- a cell-like structure that makes them especially difficult to break.

How the drug-trafficking organizations will react to the extraditions
remains an open question. In Colombia in the 1980s, drug kingpins
resisted extradition to the U.S. with a campaign of bombings and
assassinations.

In recent years, analysts say, Mexico's drug-trafficking
organizations have not sought an open confrontation with the federal
government. Most of their firepower has been directed against one
another, and against municipal and state officials. Last year, more
than 2,000 people were killed as rival groups battled one another and
the authorities.

Cardenas and the Gulf cartel, based in the northern Mexican state of
Tamaulipas, have upped the ante in the war against their rivals from
the western state of Sinaloa by recruiting highly trained soldiers
from the Mexican army, known as the Zetas.

The rival Mexican syndicates are responsible for 80% of the cocaine
that enters the United States, according to American officials.