GENERALS FACE COUNTS FOR AID TO DRUG CARTEL

MEXICO CITY -- Two generals long suspected of corruption have been arrested
and imprisoned by the military on charges of collaborating with the Juarez
drug cartel, prosecutors said yesterday.

They are Gen. Francisco Quiroz Hermosillo, who retired in July from the
army, and Brig. Gen. Mario Arturo Acosta Chaparro, a counterinsurgency
expert with a reputation for repression who is on active duty. Their
arrests on charges of drug trafficking and bribery Thursday were an
additional blow to the reputation of the Mexican armed forces in their role
as a narcotics enforcer.

President-elect Vicente Fox, who takes office Dec. 1, has promised to
withdraw the military from the drug war after a decade in which the drug
barons bought off the armed forces as much as the military fought the
traffickers. The constitution bars the military from any role other than
national defense.

The corruption at the highest levels became painfully apparent in 1997,
when Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, appointed by President Ernesto Zedillo
as the first military figure to be the government's drug czar, was arrested
on charges that he had been paid off by Amado Carrillo Fuentes, who led the
Juarez cartel.