U.S. MUST REDUCE DRUG CONSUMPTION - MEXICO PRESIDENT

NEW YORK - Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo said on
Thursday that the United States was not an innocent bystander in the
drug war, and cartels could only be toppled by reducing rampant U.S.
consumption.

Zedillo, in New York on a two-day U.S. visit, said drug trafficking
was Mexico's most severe national security problem.

``But we can only solve it if we continue to work together -- it is a
shared responsibility,'' he said at a breakfast sponsored by the
Americas Society. ``You have to work here to reduce consumption and
fight crime and that, in the end, is the most important part.''

Zedillo said Mexico was doing its part containing the drug
plague.

``If you look at the figures of seizures and criminals that have been
prosecuted and put in jail no matter what their political importance,
then you have evidence that we work hard (against drug trafficking).''

Mexico, often prickly when it believes the United States is meddling
in its affairs, is one of the main routes for cocaine traffic from
South America.

Last week, Washington released a blacklist of 12 suspected
international drug kingpins -- six of whom were Mexicans.

Zedillo also addressed crime and police corruption, central issues in
the July 2 election campaign in which Francisco Labastida, the ruling
Institutional Revolutionary Party's candidate, is in a statistical
dead heat against Vicente Fox, of the conservative National Action
Party (PAN).

``The wave of crime that affected many of our cities has begun to
reverse but much remains to be done before we can be satisfied,''
Zedillo said, adding that in the past four years the federal budget
for public safety has increased 15 times.

Zedillo said the government is also trying to rid the police force of
corrupt and incompetent officers. Police officers, mistrusted by most
Mexicans, are poorly paid and often take bribes to ignore crime rather
than fight it.

Foreign investors, worried about street crime and police corruption,
have even threatened to pull factories out of Latin America's second
largest economy.

Sony Corp. warned Mexico last month that the critical level of crime
could force the company to reduce its local operations or even move
plants to a more secure country.

The Inter-American Development Bank said Mexico's chronic crime and
violence are costing the nation 9 percent of its gross domestic
product, or some $44.4 billion a year.