MEXICO DETERMINED TO ROOT OUT CORRUPTION IN DRUG WAR

MEXICO CITY -- President Vicente Fox's administration has stepped up its
campaign to show that Mexico is finally ready, willing and able to root out
the corruption that undermines the country's war against drug traffickers.

Over the past few months, the administration has exposed with unusual
openness a collection of corrupt police agents and soldiers who made it
easier to smuggle cocaine and marijuana into the United States. And last
week, the attorney general's office began touting the imminent creation of
an agency charged with ushering in a cleaner era of narcotics operations.

"I have ordered an evaluation of everything and everyone," Attorney General
Rafael Macedo de la Concha said last week. "We are going to need the right
people for the new system. Evaluated, qualified people whose trustworthiness
can be guaranteed."

What might sound like a rehash of broken promises from past Mexican
governments seems to be a sincere desire on the part of the Fox
administration to overturn decades of failed attempts to defuse corruption,
many observers said.