U.S.DOWNPLAYS DISMAYING DATA FROM MEXICO'S ANTI-DRUG EFFORTS

Washington-As the Clinton administration weighs its annual evaluation
of Mexico's cooperation in fighting illegal drugs, U.S. officials
admit privately that by most statistical measures, the Mexican record
looks especially bad this year.

Drug seizures by the Mexican police have fallen significantly. Nearly
all of the most important Mexican narcotics traffickers identified
last year remain at large. The promised extraditions of some Mexican
drug suspects to the United States have not materialized, and drug
enforcement programs have been rocked by a series of public conflicts
between the two governments.

Yet even as President Clinton embarks on a brief visit to Mexico, his
aides have neither despaired of such facts nor spent much time
analyzing them.

"There is a difference between cooperation and success," the State
Department spokesman, James Rubin, argued last week. While their
cooperation might not be having much effect on the problem, he
suggested, Mexican officials "are cooperating more closely with the
United States at virtually every level than ever before."