U.S. AND MEXICO ARE AT ODDS OVER TRUTH ABOUT LIE TESTS

MEXICO CITY, March 1 - The chairman of a House committee with oversight
over drug policy said today that Mexico, embarrassed by the poor showing of
its anti-drug agents in lie detector tests, had canceled the testing
program last August.

The legislator, John L. Mica, Republican of Florida, said, "Everyone was
failing the tests, so they eliminated the program."

But Mr. Mica's assertions - which came on the same day that Mexico was
officially certified by President Clinton as a reliable partner in the war
against drugs - were emphatically denied by Mexico.

Alejandro Diaz de Leon, a representative of the Mexican attorney general's
office in Washington, said in an interview that Mexican agents were still
being given the tests. Last August, he said, Mexico simply began excluding
American officials from witnessing the tests because Mexican technicians
felt competent to do them on their own.

The revelations about the testing came as the administration announced that
Mexico and Colombia, the two countries that are the main source and
corridor for most of the cocaine entering the United States, were doing
their share to stop the production and smuggling of illegal drugs.

They were among 26 countries identified as tied to the world's illicit drug
trade in an annual report required by Congress. All but two of the
countries - Afghanistan and Myanmar, the former Burma - were certified as
cooperating with the United States to stop drug trafficking. The countries
that fail to be certified as cooperating are subject to American trade
sanctions, including the withholding of investment credits by international
lending institutions.

Ever since Mexico's top narcotics official, Gen. JesFAs Gutierrez Rebollo,
was discovered to be an associate of a leading trafficker three years ago,
authorities had routinely submitted members of the country's elite
anti-drug squads to lie detector tests as a way of certifying their integrity.

But last year Mexico began to exclude American officials from the sessions
in which the tests were administered, arousing suspicions about the
integrity of the process, United States officials said today. Dismayed,
they said, they reacted by reducing cooperation with several of the squads.

In congressional testimony on Tuesday, William E. Ledwith, chief of
international operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration, said the
testing program had been "shut down."

Mr. Ledwith was asked to describe the "problem areas" in working with
Mexico on drugs. He cited Mexico's failure to arrest any major traffickers
recently, a string of frustrated extradition attempts, and the suspension
of the lie detector program in the elite squads.

The program, he said, was shut down in August.

Terry Parham, a D.E.A. spokesman, said that United States officials were
negotiating with Mexico in an attempt to re-establish the tests.