GRAVES DISPUTE STRAINS U.S.-MEXICAN TIES

Estimate Of The Number Of Drug-Crime Victims Becomes Sensitive Issue

The discovery of a clandestine cemetery for what may be victims of drug
violence in the wild-west border city of Ciudad Juarez, has exposed the
mutual distrust and suspicion that lie at the heart of Mexican-U.S.
relations whenever illicit drugs are the issue.

Earlier this week, Thomas J. Pickard, the deputy director of the Federal
Bureau of Investigation, told U.S. reporters an informant had said a number
of bodies of drug violence victims were believed to be buried in mass
graves near Ciudad Juarez, which is across the Rio Grande from El Paso,
Texas. The resulting newspaper stories, relying on estimates that more than
100 people had been reported missing in recent years in the are, suggested
that scores of bodies would quickly be uncovered.

The FBI sent 65 agents to Juarez, in coordination with Mexican officials,
to help with the exhumations. Mexican Attorney General Jorge Madrazo later
said his office was working on the "hypothesis" that more than 100 people,
including 22 Americans, could be buried there.

Since 1997, Ciudad Juarez, which apart from being the capital of Mexico's
booming export-zone-manufacturing business is also headquarters of the
violent Juarez drug cartel, has suffered a wave of murders and abductions
as traffickers fought for control of the drug business after its head,
Amado Carrillo Fuentes, died.

Since 1990, at least 196 people, most of them involved in or touched by the
drug trade, have disappeared in the Juarez and El Paso area; many are
presumed to have been kidnapped by corrupt Mexican police in the pay of
drug traffickers, says an organization made up of relatives and friends of
the missing.

In hindsight, U.S. and Mexican officials appear to have erred in giving the
impression that many of the missing would be found in the mass graves.
Relatives of the missing have flocked to the scene waiting for word about
their loved ones. But after five days of digging and probing with
sophisticated FBI electronic equipment that had been used to find mass
graves in Kosovo, searchers have found the remains of only six people.

U.S. officials fear that if few bodies turn up, anti-American sentiment in
Mexico could swell, allowing nationalist-leaning politicians to claim that
the U.S. had slandered their country with visions of killing fields. Some
politicians are already taking that tack.

"They are using a few facts to construct a myth," says Adolfo Aguilar
Zinser, an independent senator. "What's true is that there are six or seven
bodies, what's myth is that there are hundreds of dead."

The White House is concerned enough to put out the word that administration
officials should play down expectations about how many bodies would be
found and how quickly. "Everybody here has been very careful not to say how
many bodies there are," an FBI official said. "The number of people who are
missing is getting confused with the number of people who are likely to be
found."

But the world-wide attention given to the reports has already created a
public-relations nightmare for Mexico just a week before President Ernesto
Zedillo is to meet with President Clinton in Washington. Many Mexican
officials feel that it is the first shot in the battle Mexico faces in
Washington every March when the administration braves a congressional hue
and cry to "certify" Mexico as an ally in the war against drugs. "We are
seeing the winter offensive against certification a month and a half early"
says one Mexican official, expressing a common view.

In Washington, U.S. officials are watching developments in Juarez with a
mixture of optimism and apprehension. Administration officials, who favor
certifying Mexico, say Mexico's level of cooperation in this case is
unprecedented and will help mute complaints among hard-liners that Mexican
law enforcement officials are corrupt. The Mexicans, officials say,
participated for some time in the investigation and kept it secret until
the FBI was ready to move in.

"Certification is fully cooperating, and this is my definition of being
fully cooperative," said a State Department official.

Yet some in the administration fear a backlash if only a few bodies are
found. "The operating assumption is that more bodies [including some
Americans] will be found, but nobody is willing to place a definitive
number on that," says the FBI official. "It may be a lot more, or it may
only be a couple more."