DEA CHIEF TELLS SENATE PANEL OF MEXICAN POLICE CORRUPTION

Criticism comes as Clinton is expected to certify U.S. neighbor as
drug-war ally

WASHINGTON -- Recently uncovered evidence of corruption pervading some
Mexican law enforcement units has dealt a ``major setback'' to the
drug war in Mexico, a senior Clinton administration official told a
Senate panel Wednesday.

The testimony by Thomas Constantine, chief of the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration, came just as President Clinton is expected
to reaffirm Mexico as a cooperative partner in the fight against the
drug trade.

Although Constantine avoided passing judgment on certification, which
has become an annual occasion for cross-border tension and
reconciliation, he and other U.S. officials raised questions about
Mexico's drug-fighting record in the past year.

``There are numerous conditions in Mexico today that, unfortunately,
have allowed the organized criminal drug-trafficking syndicates to
grow even stronger than I predicted a few years ago,'' Constantine
said. ``It is almost as if members of the (Mexican drug) organizations
have little to fear except the slim possibility that they will be
extradited to the United States to face justice.''

Constantine, in written and oral testimony, listed a number of major
suspected traffickers who appear to operate with virtual impunity. And
he warned that the traffickers had gained such influence within key
Mexican counternarcotics units that future attempts by U.S. agencies
to share sensitive intelligence would ``depend on elimination of
corruption'' in those units.

Seizing on such remarks, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., pressed a
State Department official to explain why Mexico should be termed an
ally in the drug war despite its failure to extradite any major drug
suspects to the United States.

``Somewhere there's a hang-up,'' Feinstein said.

Rand Beers, assistant secretary of state for international narcotics
and law enforcement affairs, replied, ``I would have to say we're not
happy (or) satisfied with where we are on the extradition issue.''

The hearing before the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics
Control underscores how the certification process, in which the United
States evaluates the counternarcotics merits and demerits of 28
countries, produces a volatile combination of politics, diplomacy and
law enforcement.

Countries that are not certified as allies in the anti-drug crusade
face possible economic sanctions, a threat many Mexicans view as harsh
and sanctimonious given the huge U.S. markets for cocaine, marijuana,
heroin and methamphetamine.

Clinton has until Monday to announce whether he will certify Mexico
and the other countries, but the president telegraphed his intentions
about Mexico earlier this month. In a meeting with Mexican President
Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de LeF3n in the YucatE1n Peninsula, Clinton
praised the Zedillo administration's courage in confronting the drug
trade and corruption and said the country should not be penalized.

Those statements gave little comfort to congressional critics, who in
past years have mounted unsuccessful efforts to overturn the

president's certification of Mexico.

Wednesday, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, the chairman of the drug
oversight panel, criticized what he called ``several years of happy
talk'' by U.S. and Mexican officials who have promoted certification.
What the two countries need, he said, are results.