MEXICO, U.S. TIES WARM IN NEW ERA

Americas: A change of leaders has mellowed the nations'
relationship, allowing for better cooperation on issues from border
policy to crime-fighting.

MEXICO CITY--Cross-border cooperation between the United States and
Mexico, on issues as diverse as the environment, fugitives, illegal
immigration and drugs, has vastly improved under the new
administrations of George W. Bush and Vicente Fox, officials in both
countries agree.

U.S.-Mexican teamwork at the top levels of government is beginning to
pay important dividends. For instance, when U.S. narcotics agents
pounced on suspected cocaine traffickers last month in several
American cities, the operation didn't stop at the border. Mexican
police followed up with raids in Monterrey and Mexico City, capturing
14 money-laundering suspects.

Despite such successes, daunting obstacles to cross-border
cooperation remain. On the thorny issues of drug trafficking and
immigration, in particular, corruption in Mexico and mistrust in the
U.S. prevent the full intelligence-sharing needed to tackle the
smuggling empires head-on.

And in other areas, such as trade, powerful constituencies in both
countries are hindering efforts at closer cooperation. Just last
week, the Bush administration suffered an embarrassing blow to its
efforts to further free trade between the two countries when the
House of Representatives, citing safety concerns, voted to block
Mexican trucks from traveling freely in the U.S., even though the
president had supported such unfettered access.

Nonetheless, the moment is propitious: Mexican President Fox commands
wide popularity thanks to his victory last July over the
Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which governed Mexico for
71 years. Fox vowed to attack the corruption that had scarred the
PRI's rule--and had fed U.S. mistrust of any serious cooperation with
Mexico.

Bush, who as governor of Texas forged a strong relationship with his
Mexican neighbors, is eager to achieve some victories on foreign
policy, not otherwise his strength.

The combination of a new Mexican democratic legitimacy and a
sympathetic new U.S. president has generated momentum for progress.
The two sides have outlined an ambitious agenda for the years ahead
that could fundamentally change the way the neighbors treat each
other.

"It's amazing the level of attention we're receiving," said Rafael
Fernandez de Castro, an expert on U.S.-Mexican relations at the
Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico. "A [Mexican] friend of
mine in Washington says that when he calls a U.S. government agency
now, he's treated as if he had a British accent. So yes, we are
enjoying a honeymoon. Mexico has become suitably politically correct."

The cooperation is quickly going beyond generalities and principles,
addressing practical details of contentious issues that have caused
repeated rifts in past years.

For example, the United States and Mexico recently announced a joint
approach to improve safety for migrants crossing the U.S. border
illegally. The agreement calls for a set of specific joint
search-and-rescue measures, as well as a policy review: The United
States will reconsider programs such as "Operation Gatekeeper" on the
California-Mexico border that have pushed migrants into the desert,
and Mexico will look at ways to prevent migrants from crossing in the
most dangerous areas.

Other areas also are getting new focus. In March, the two countries
negotiated a deal on the contentious issue of water use along the
border. For years, Texas farmers had complained that Mexico was
failing to meet its commitment to release a minimum amount of water
from its headwater tributaries into the Rio Grande, causing severe
shortages of irrigation water. The agreement calls for Mexico to
increase its provision of water. That deal is being implemented this
summer.

More important, the accord requires the two countries to begin
long-term joint planning for the entire Rio Grande basin, a move that
environmentalists and farmers alike have been seeking for years.

The Fox government has also increased the capture and hand-over of
fugitives who have fled from the U.S. to Mexico. In the first nine
months of this fiscal year, Mexico has caught and deported 43
fugitives suspected of federal crimes, compared with 17 in all of
fiscal 2000, according to the FBI. U.S. officials have worked closely
with Mexican authorities to improve coordination in tracking down
fugitives.

Extraditions of suspected drug traffickers from Mexico, a far more
complex legal procedure than deportation, also are up sharply, thanks
in part to a Mexican Supreme Court ruling in January declaring
extradition to the U.S. constitutional.

Still, U.S. officials and Washington-based experts on Mexico warn
that the honeymoon will only go as far as Mexican anti-corruption
efforts are deep.

"The changes at the top level are important, and they really are
significant because they turn the ship 180 degrees in the other
direction, but at the middle and lower levels there is not yet much
confidence from the U.S. perspective in what is happening on the
Mexican side," said John Bailey, a professor of government at
Georgetown University and the author of numerous books on the U.S.
and Mexico.

The lack of trust had grown so deep by 1998 that the United States
failed to keep Mexico apprised of a major money-laundering probe in
which U.S. agents crossed clandestinely into Mexico to carry out
investigations. That operation, called Casablanca, caused a furor in
Mexico over U.S. interference, which overshadowed the money
laundering.

Facing that legacy, Fox's top officials set out first to rebuild the
foundation.

Asked to identify the goals in the new U.S.-Mexican relationship,
Fox's national security advisor, Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, said: "It's
establishing trust. This is the key."

Aguilar Zinser recalled that, during a visit to Canada with top
security officers there, "one thing that impressed me was that they
said, 'The first thing you have to build is trust with the United
States. The best defense you can make for your own sovereignty with
the U.S. is trust.'

"This was the center of the debate and discussion between Fox and
Bush on security," Aguilar Zinser said. "They were determined to
build trust. And that's what we're going to work on. Bush looked Fox
in the eye and said, 'I can trust you thoroughly,' and so far there's
been no breach of that trust. . . . We are checking with each other
every day. We are looking at areas of cooperation every day."

Sen. Charles Hagel (R-Neb.) was a member of a bipartisan group of
U.S. lawmakers who traveled to Mexico City this spring to mend
fences. After years in which Republicans on Capitol Hill spoke
disdainfully of Mexico's drug-fighting efforts, the trip by Hagel and
Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), among others, marked a turnaround.

"What the reality is on the Mexican side of the border in the way of
a culture that has propagated corruption, that is not going to change
in one Fox term, and we'd better understand that," Hagel said. "That
is a generational issue. That is how people have survived in Mexico
and in many countries of the world. To change that, they are going to
have to change pay structures, workers' rights--a whole set of
standards and cultural values are going to have to change.

"But if you are intent on leading an effort to make that change, as I
believe Fox is, then you must begin somewhere," Hagel said.

The drug-trafficking conduit from Mexico into the United States has
always been one of the most controversial problems and perhaps the
weakest area of cooperation. In recent months, the channel has taken
some hits.

In May, Mexican officials arrested Mario Villanueva, the former
governor of Quintana Roo state who had fled in April 1999 as he was
about to be arrested on drug smuggling charges. Unusually, Mexican
Atty. Gen. Rafael Macedo de la Concha publicly recognized that U.S.
authorities had provided information that helped lead to Villanueva's
arrest.

A day later, a grand jury indictment against Villanueva was unsealed
in a New York federal court. The U.S. investigation linked the former
governor to a series of cocaine shipments into the United States
between 1994 and 1998.

Felix Jimenez, the agent in charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration office in New York that handled the Villanueva case,
compared cooperation in past years with the current atmosphere of
trust using these words: "Night and day."

Significantly, U.S. officials provided intelligence to their Mexican
counterparts more than a week before the joint anti-drug operation in
June, senior U.S. officials said. In the past, for fear of leaks,
U.S. information was shared only a day before such operations, if at
all.

The toughest issues still lie ahead, particularly the negotiations on
immigration.

Before he was inaugurated in December, Fox provoked an uproar during
a U.S. visit by suggesting that the goal should be an open
U.S.-Mexican border, with a free flow of labor.

Mexico is seeking an accord on immigration with the United States
that would significantly increase the number of Mexicans who can
legally work north of the border.

In return, the U.S. is sure to seek Mexico's commitment to clamp down
on illegal migration.

U.S. Ambassador Jeffrey Davidow said that in the migration
negotiations, "the level of communication has never been better."