JUAREZ HUNT GROWS FOR DRUG WAR GRAVES

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico -- After spending two days searching the
ranchlands south of this border city for the buried remains of as many
as 100 people abducted and killed by a ferocious drug cartel, U.S and
Mexican authorities found only the bones of one person and so they
broadened the scope of their hunt Tuesday.

Despite the seemingly tedious pace of the investigation, authorities
from both countries remain confident they will find more bodies.

"We have very concrete information as to these sites," said Jose
Larrieta Carrasco, head of the organized crime unit for the Mexican
Attorney General's Office, known by its Spanish initials PGR.

PGR officers, members of the Mexican military, 65 FBI agents and
personnel from the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Customs
Service began searching the grounds of two ranches near Ciudad Juarez
on Monday. Led to the sites by a paid informant, the Mexican and U.S.
officers used electronic equipment to scan beneath the surface of the
ground for possible grave sites. A backhoe was used to move earth.

The officers on Monday searched only the two ranches -- one 18 miles
south of Juarez, the other 40. But with few results, they expanded
their efforts Tuesday afternoon. Officials offered few details of their hunt.

Based on missing person reports filed in recent years, agents believe
there could be as many as 100 people buried in the region, including
22 Americans. Some non-government sources say the number could be as
high as 196.

All of the victims were either tied to or got caught up in the vicious
battle waged by drug cartels in the Juarez region fighting for control
of cocaine and marijuana markets, authorities believe.

"We believe these people were killed for their knowledge or for being
witness to drug trafficking," Assistant FBI Director Thomas Pickard
said in Washington. "Most of the information we have shows these
individuals were buried there at least two to three years ago."

Juarez, just south of El Paso, is in a period of tremendous growth as
Mexicans migrate to find work. But the population boom brought its
share of problems. Mysterious disappearances are common.

One abduction story was shared Tuesday by Santos Alonso Aguilar as he
stood outside a white-walled ranch where authorities dug.

Aguilar said two men came to his home in Juarez on May 23, 1998, and
took away his 33-year-old brother Jose, an auto body repairman.

"They had the look of those who are dressed like this," Aguilar said,
pointing toward Mexican police guarding the site.

"For more than two years we have heard nothing of him," said another
brother, Roman. "They should give us an answer now."

But Santos Alonso Aguilar added: "I hope my brother isn't
here."

Families of the missing have long complained that both Mexican and
American authorities have been unresponsive to their cries for help.
It led to Americans Jaime F. Hervella of El Paso and Saul Sanchez of
Laredo founding the Association of Relatives of Disappeared Persons to
give families a louder voice.

Sanchez -- whose son, Saul Sanchez Jr., disappeared from Juarez in
1994 -- was surprised to learn of the hunt for grave sites.

"I have been after the FBI and the State Department for five and a
half years, and they wouldn't give me the time of day," he said. "Why
have they waited so long? It's very disgusting."

The association has tallied the names of 196 people missing from the
region since 1990. Not all association members believe the abductions
were tied to Juarez drug cartel.

At its height, the Juarez cartel was so powerful it had the chief of
Mexico's anti-narcotics forces, Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo and many
low-ranking officers on its payroll, Mexican prosecutors say.
Gutierrez Rebollo was arrested in 1997, and sentenced to 40 years in
prison.

The 1997 death of cartel leader Amado Carillo Fuentes, after plastic
surgery designed to help him elude law enforcement, set off a bloody
fight for control of the cartel's drug routes into the United States.

Cartel leadership was assumed by Juan Jose Esparragoso Moreno, Alcides
Ramon Magana and Gilberton Salinas Doria, police say. Salinas is a
former police officer in Donna and Weslaco in the Rio Grande Valley.
The three lieutenants reportedly shifted their operations from Juarez
to Cancun.

Salinas was arrested and his testimony helped push a U.S.- Mexican
drug investigation dubbed "Operation Impunity." It resulted in the
arrest of many of the cartel's alleged ringleaders.

President Clinton on Tuesday called the reports of a mass grave near
Juarez another "horrible example ... of the excesses of the drug
dealing cartels in Mexico." The president said the suspected burial
ground reinforces "the imperative of not only trying to protect our
border but to work with Mexican authorities to try to combat" drug
cartels.

"We had a lot of success a few years ago in taking down a number of
the Colombian drug cartels and one of the adverse consequences of that
was a lot of the operations were moved north into Mexico," Clinton
said.