MEXICANS COMPLAIN OF U.S. MEDDLING IN GRAVE HUNT

MEXICO CITY - The participation of U.S. FBI agents in the
search for victims of the Juarez drug cartel is a violation of
Mexico's sovereignty and a blow to the nation's pride, government
critics charge.

``Under the argument of fighting drugs, we are being colonized by the
United States,'' independent senator Adolfo Aguilar Zinser told
Congress Wednesday. He said U.S. meddling in the operation had
threatened Mexican sovereignty. In response, Eduardo Ibarrola, Deputy
Attorney General for international law told Mexico's Televisa network
cross-border cooperation was the best response to multinational criminals.

``Crime has globalized,'' Ibarrola said. ``It doesn't respect national
frontiers and we have to confront it with all resources
available.''

A team of 65 FBI investigators, working with Mexican authorities,
unearthed six bodies this week in a mass grave in northern Mexico on a
ranch near border city Ciudad Juarez.

The binational teams expect to find more bodies in their search of
four different sites where the infamous Juarez cocaine-running cartel
may have executed and buried people.

No one knows how many bodies may be dug out, but missing persons
groups in Juarez say drug violence has resulted in the disappearance
of almost 200 people in recent years.

Wednesday, senators including Zinser took advantage of a congressional
appearance by Foreign Minister Rosario Green to blast her with
criticism of the FBI presence. But Green and Ibarrola said binational
agreements, some of them approved by Mexico's Senate, allow joint U.S.
and Mexican efforts to combat drugs and crime.

U.S. Ambassador Jeffrey Davidow told reporters the U.S. was not
pressuring Mexico and was only trying to help.

U.S. presence on Mexican soil is a highly sensitive issue in proud
Mexico, which shares a 2,100-mile (3,000-km) frontier with its
powerful neighbor to the north.

Mexicans harbor long-standing resentment stemming from the Mexican War
150 years ago, when the United States snatched nearly half of Mexico's
territory.

Mexico has also traditionally followed an independent foreign policy,
and remains the only Latin American nation that hasn't followed the
U.S. in cutting ties to Cuba.

Respected constitutional law expert Ignacio Burgoa told Televisa ``no
foreign authority or investigative police force ... can exercise
functions inside national territory, because that would mean a
violation of national sovereignty.''

Ibarrola responded that as long as U.S. officials were not exercising
jurisdiction, making arrests or searches on their own authority, but
just giving technical aid, they were operating ''within the framework
of international treaties.''

U.S. officials have long complained that Mexican authorities are
incapable of fighting powerful drug gangs who traditionally bribe
police, prosecutors, judges and high government officials to keep them
at bay.

For their part, Mexicans have long bristled at the presence on their
soil of underground agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration.

Wednesday, former DEA director Thomas Constantine told ABC television
the lack of arrests of drug traffickers in Mexico shows the deep
levels of corruption and suggests the cartels are more powerful than
the government.

In an annual ritual when the White House ``certifies'' foreign
countries that have been helpful in the international fight against
drugs, many U.S. lawmakers resist certifying Mexico because of
official complicity in the drug trade.

Officials were tipped off to the existence of possible mass graves
near Juarez by a former Mexican policeman who moonlighted as a hitman
for the Juarez cartel. He confessed to participating in some of the
killings.

Earlier this week, Enrique Cocina Martinez, federal special prosecutor
in Mexico City, said local and state police and judicial officials in
Juarez were not informed about the investigation earlier ``because
some might be involved with the drug cartels, both state and local.''