U.S. DRUG CZAR PRAISES MEXICO'S CRACKDOWN

Change In Strategy Has Disrupted Cartels, Driven Prices Up, He Says

MEXICO CITY - After a two-year run in which army and federal agents have
captured three dozen drug lords and arrested thousands of street dealers,
Mexicans are outpacing Americans in the fight against drugs, the United
States' drug czar said.

John Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control
Policy, on Thursday lauded the work of Mexican President Vicente Fox and
his various organized crime strike forces.

In Mexico to learn more about Mr. Fox's strategy against drug traffickers
and to attend the opening of the headquarters for the country's new federal
investigations agency, Mr. Walters said the Mexican effort has led to a
noticeable disruption in the drug trade in the United States.

Cutting cocaine

"There has been a 9 percent drop in the purity of cocaine" sold in the
United States, Mr. Walters said in an interview. "And more of the cocaine
is being cut, with substances such as caffeine." There's also evidence, Mr.
Walters said, that street prices for drugs are going up, because
enforcement efforts and a tighter U.S.-Mexico border in the months after
the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have driven up drug traffickers' costs of
doing business.

In addition, Mr. Walters confirmed what U.S. anti-drug agents have been
saying privately for months: Better enforcement has caused Mexican drug
cartels to fall behind in payments to Colombian producers who sell them the
drugs that they move into the United States.

All of this, he said, is the result of Mexico's abandoning the traditional
methods of attacking cartels in a "vertical" strategy - that is, going
after small-time dealers and then moving up an organization's ladder - in
favor of a horizontal attack in which senior cartel leaders are
simultaneously targeted. That approach has created holes in drug
organizations that cartels have struggled to fill, Mr. Walters said.

The results "are historic. We've never seen this kind of achievement by any
country," Mr. Walters said. "I want to see us with the same kind of tempo
of success as we see here. Right now, Mexico is working ahead of us in
attacking the problem."

Mr. Walters said he was meeting this week with his Mexican counterparts to
learn more of their new strategy.

Corrupt agents fired

Since Mr. Fox's upset victory in 2000 over the long-ruling Institutional
Revolutionary Party, Mexico's drug enforcement agencies, primarily the
federal attorney general's office, have been undergoing an overhaul in
which hundreds of corrupt or ineffective agents have been fired or
arrested. In turn, Mr. Fox has ordered a new, better trained and equipped
force of investigators. And while those new gumshoes are being trained, the
president has tapped the Mexican military's intelligence units and elite
commando groups to lead raids against the cartels.

The efforts have worked so far, Mr. Walters said. In recent months three
major Mexican cartels - the Tijuana-based Arellano Félix Organization, the
Juárez cartel, and the Gulf cartel - have each seen their chiefs or a large
number of lieutenants jailed or killed.

Mexican officials say that this year they've seized 36 tons of cocaine,
2,500 tons of marijuana, 717 kilos of opium paste, and 439 kilos of heroin.
Mexico is believed to supply 70 percent of the cocaine consumed in the
United States. The total American drug market is worth an estimated $60
billion a year.

American field agents now routinely laud the work of their Mexican
counterparts even as they increasingly share confidential information about
traffickers.

In the past, U.S. officials were reluctant to pass on sensitive information
to Mexico's corruption-addled federal prosecutors. Now, there's a greater
flow of information to a smaller, more reliable set of Mexican officials
and military commanders, Mexican and U.S. drug enforcement officials said.

"In this government, we are stopping narco-trafficking," Mr. Fox said this
week. "The battle is life and death, and nothing and no one will intimidate
us. We've organized and prepared very well to wage a profound battle."

In-depth study

Mr. Walters said he is initiating a drive by U.S. enforcement agencies to
study, in-depth, how the illicit drug business works - and how American
enforcement efforts can be better used to disrupt the marketplace. "I've
told [U.S. drug agents] that I don't care about numbers of seizures. ... I
care more about how they're making a difference, how they are disrupting
the drug market," Mr. Walters said.

Despite the successes, Mexican officials and Mr. Walters acknowledge that
Mexican drug trafficking remains a huge threat to North American society.

Indeed, according to Mexican drug enforcement officials, the cartels are
splitting into ever-smaller groups of dealers and cross-border traffickers
- - a move that is forcing anti-drug agents to track a greater number of
suspects, where before they had focused on just a few large organizations.

The Mexican cartels "have been seriously damaged," Mr. Walters said. "But
they've not been taken out."