HELMS, PANEL GO TO MEXICO

Senator Had Been A Longtime Critic

MEXICO CITY (Reuters And Associated Press) -- Sen. Jesse Helms, long a
virulent critic of Mexico, led his Senate Foreign Relations Committee into
the country yesterday for a historic visit aimed at nurturing a new spirit
of U.S.-Mexican cooperation.

The veteran Republican lawmaker from North Carolina met last night with
President Vicente Fox, whose election last year, warmly welcomed in
Washington, ended 71 years of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary
Party, or PRI.

The three-day visit will include talks with senior government officials,
including Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda, and a joint meeting tomorrow of
the foreign relations committees of both the U.S. and Mexican senates.

It will be the first time a U.S. congressional committee has met on foreign
soil with a committee of a foreign legislature.

Joining Helms are Sens. Joseph Biden, D-Del.; Chuck Hagel, R-Neb.; Lincoln
Chafee, R-R.I., and John Ensign, R-Nev.

The meetings were expected to focus on drug trafficking, immigration and trade.

Both sides say Mexico's change of government means there is now a real
chance of progress in those areas.

Helms, 79, has called Fox a "genuinely democratic leader and a bona fide
reformer" -- glowing praise from a man who stridently opposed a string of
previous Mexican governments.

Even after Fox's election and the success of his first meeting with
President Bush in February, Helm's visit has surprised many in Mexico.

"Seeing is believing!" analyst Rafael Fernandez de Castro said in Reforma
newspaper yesterday. He welcomed Helms' "radical change of attitude,"
saying he had seemed unable to distinguish between Mexico's corrupt
governments and its ordinary citizens.

"It is difficult to determine to what point he was attacking the PRI system
and to what point he really believed the existence of Mexico on its
southern border was a geographical disgrace for the United States," he said.

U.S.-Mexico relations have improved steadily during the past two decades
and the two nations are now linked economically under the North American
Free Trade Agreement.