NARCOTICS: PROBE IN CHIHUAHUA ADDS TO FEARS THAT INVOLVEMENT IN ANTI-DRUG
FIGHT IS IMPERILING MILITARY.

MEXICO CITY--In a fresh embarrassment for its anti-narcotics efforts, the
Mexican military announced Friday that it is investigating several soldiers
for stealing about 15 pounds of cocaine from seized shipments that the army
was supposed to incinerate.

The incident made front pages in Mexico on Friday, reflecting fears that
the army's growing drug-fighting role is endangering a key national
institution. Both U.S. and Mexican officials have pushed the respected
military to become more active in anti-narcotics work because of extensive
corruption in police and political ranks.

In an unusually sweeping investigation, the army confined the 96th Infantry
Battalion to its barracks in recent days, administering drug- detection
tests to most of the 560 members in the unit. The battalion is based in the
city of Chihuahua, about 110 miles from the Texas border. "We will take
this to its ultimate consequences," vowed the army's top prosecutor, Gen.
Rafael Macedo de la Concha, in an interview here. The theft was detected
Oct. 22 shortly before a ceremony in the northern city that was intended to
highlight the government's success in combating illegal narcotics.

Authorities had planned to burn 2 tons of marijuana and cocaine seized over
the past three months.

The military was guarding the drugs. But shortly before the ceremony
began, government technicians noticed something wrong with several packages
of cocaine that together should have weighed about 15 pounds, Macedo de la
Concha said. "In their place were other packages weighing about 12 kilos,"
or 26 pounds, he said. "The experts did tests and discovered the substance
wasn't cocaine." In fact, it appeared to be flour. Macedo de la Concha said
it wasn't clear whether the thieves intended to sell the cocaine or use it
themselves. Four low-ranking soldiers have been accused in the theft, he
said, and others could be detained.

The stolen cocaine has a street value of about $56,000 in Mexico, and at
least four times that amount in the United States, according to official
U.S. and Mexican estimates. The incident became public late Thursday after
families of soldiers complained that the battalion had been confined to
barracks. Macedo de la Concha said that most of the unit's soldiers were
subjected to drug-detection tests after the theft was discovered but that
testing of the unit's personnel occurs routinely.

He declined to reveal the results of the recent tests. The army, revered
as a legacy of the 1910 Mexican Revolution, has a long history of
involvement in eradicating poppy and marijuana plants.

As Mexico has become a major route for U.S.-bound Colombian cocaine, the
military has sharply stepped up its anti-drug work, aided by U.S. training.
That mission has exposed the military to such corruption scandals as the
1997 arrest of the country's drug czar, army Gen. Jose de Jesus Gutierrez
Rebollo, on charges of aiding drug traffickers.

The anti-narcotics fight "opens them up to corruption and can only hurt the
army in the long run," said Roderic Ai Camp, a specialist on the Mexican
military who teaches at Claremont McKenna College. But, he said, military
officers "would agree with President [Ernesto] Zedillo that there is no
alternative. This is a mission they have to perform because of inadequate
civilian capacity to do the job."

The most unusual aspect of the cocaine theft in Chihuahua, Camp said, is
the army's willingness to discuss it. The Mexican military is notoriously
secretive. Camp noted, however, that the military is gradually opening up,
even discussing its drug operations on its Web site. (
http://www.sedena.gob.mx ) "They're admitting openly in this process that
they have a problem," he said. "In the past, you would have never heard
about this." A military spokesman said the 96th Battalion isn't an elite
anti-drug group but rather an ordinary unit.

In Washington, a senior Pentagon official said there is no indication that
the members of the battalion are among the roughly 1,000 Mexican military
officers who have been trained in the United States since 1996 as part of
joint U.S.-Mexico counter-narcotics efforts.