DRUGS AND DISTRUST ACROSS THE BORDER

If there's a positive side to the grisly search for mass graves of victims
of narcotraffickers near Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, it
has to be the high level of U.S.-Mexican cooperation displayed so far.

Mexican army and federal police are working side-by-side with 65 FBI agents
in the search for as many as 100 bodies, 22 of them reportedly Americans.

Such public cooperation is news. Though drug trafficking--and the trail of
crimes and corruption it engenders--are clearly a mutual problem,
binational cooperation often has been hampered by U.S. highhandedness or
nationalist hysteria in Mexico.

In the current search, some Mexican politicians already are complaining
that the presence of FBI agents may be a violation of national sovereignty
or that the number of bodies may have been exaggerated by U.S. officials to
besmirch Mexico's reputation.

There should be no hand wringing or apologies from the U.S. The FBI agents,
who came equipped with backhoes and other equipment, were invited in by the
Mexican government, probably for two very good reasons.

The first has to be the FBI's investigative expertise. The other--although
no Mexican official is likely ever to admit it--could well be that the
level of narco-corruption and terror in the region is such that it raised
doubts about the trustworthiness of municipal and state officers.

In fact, some of the Mexican federal troops at the site covered their faces
with ski masks, apparently for fear of retribution if they appeared on TV
or in the newspapers.

Juarez, and Ensenada in Baja California, have become two major U.S. entry
points for narcotics from Colombia and the scenes of Mafia-style killings
of anyone standing in the way.

American blunders during previous investigations haven't helped the
underlying distrust between the two countries on investigations of drug
traffickers.

In 1990, Mexican bounty hunters paid by the U.S. nabbed the alleged killer
of an American drug agent and brought him to El Paso. The U.S. Supreme
Court two years later held that the man's capture was legal,
notwithstanding the violation of Mexican national sovereignty involved.

Another U.S. operation inside Mexico last year--without the knowledge of
Mexican authorities--likewise led to volleys of recrimination between the
two countries.

If nothing else, the drug-related killings along the border ought to be a
dramatic illustration of the binational nature of narcotrafficking--and the
fact that mutual cooperation is the only way to fight it.