MEXICAN METH LINK HURTS NATION'S STANDING

Mexico's president-elect has chosen a poor time to propose that the United
States end its unilateral process of certifying his country's anti-drug
efforts.

Not that it's ever propitious for Mexico to make such a suggestion,
considering its dismal record in curtailing the flow of all manner of
illegal drugs and precursor chemicals across its border with the United
States. More than half our drugs come from or through this Colombia to the
North.

But the request that Vicente Fox intends to make of President Clinton at
the White House on Aug. 24 is almost ludicrous at this juncture. Last week,
for the first time, U.S. law-enforcement officers were able to connect a
major group of pseudoephedrine distributors to Mexican-controlled
methamphetamine producers.

(Pseudoephredrine is legally used in over-the-counter cold and allergy
medicine. When illegally diverted, it a prime ingredient of meth, which has
spread from Mexico through California to Washington state and points east.)

More than 140 individuals arrested in eight American cities face charges
for their involvement in a loosely structured network trafficking in
pseudoephredrine from its headquarters in Mexico.

For years Mexico has paid only lip service to the United States' pleas to
control, or assist U.S. drug agents in controlling, that country's
family-based drug cartels whose products seep across the common
2,000-mile-long border.

By March 1 each year the president must determine whether the United States
will certify the drug-fighting initiatives of 28 countries, including
Mexico. If denied, nations face an automatic cutoff of many forms of U.S.
aid. Admittedly the carrot-and-stick ritual, in place since 1986, isn't the
ideal way to win cooperation; it has bred enormous resentment among our
Latin and South American neighbors.

But the process does provide Congress with valuable information from the
State Department about drug policies abroad and forces the administration
to defend its efforts on Capitol Hill.

If there are better ways to promote counter-narcotics cooperation among
countries, they've yet to surface. One ripe forum for a thorough vetting of
alternatives would be the presidential debates this fall.