MINUET IN MEXICO

It is fortuitous that President Clinton's first major foreign policy
decision after his acquittal in the Senate will be to affirm, once more,
that Mexico is "fully cooperating" with the United States in combating
narcotics trafficking. This gives the president an opportunity to remind
his acquitters that, in his case, dishonesty does not stop at the boudoir's
edge.

Mexico is one of 30 drug-producing nations that the American president
must, under law, annually certify to Congress as cooperating with U.S.
interdiction efforts. Under the law, decertifying Mexico would trigger
major trade and aid sanctions. That would be awkward, since Mexico is
America's second-largest trading partner.

So, every year, the same minuet: At some point in the month before the
March 1 certification deadline, Mexico unveils what U.S. drug agencies call
the "February Surprise," some new program designed to give the president a
bit of cover. This February's surprise was a $500 million upgrade of
anti-smuggling forces, announced by Mexico's interior minister, Francisco
Labastida. That would be the same Francisco Labastida whom the CIA said in
a confidential 1998 report "has long-standing ties to narcotics traffickers."

And every year, the Clinton administration announces that its searching
review has once again found Mexico to be cooperating splendidly, and the
president certifies anew. Last year, he did so in the face of a
confidential DEA report, which declared, "the Government of Mexico has not
accomplished its counternarcotics goals or succeeded in cooperation with
the United States Government."

Clinton signaled his intention to certify to falsehood once more on Monday,
after a one-day summit with Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo at the
Hacienda Temozon in Merida, Mexico. "Mexico should not be penalized for
having the courage to confront its problems," Clinton said, adding that
cooperation between the United States and Mexico "has clearly improved
under President Zedillo's leadership."

The president should break the glad news to the CIA, the Drug Enforcement
Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. As noted with dry
understatement in a New York Times story appearing the day before Clinton
spoke: "Officials from each of these agencies challenge the
administration's public assertion that the Mexican authorities are trying
to do their best."

A few facts: The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy reports
that 59 percent of the estimated 176 tons of South American cocaine
processed in 1998 was smuggled into the United States through Mexico.
Mexico is also a leading smuggler of heroin, marijuana, methamphetamine and
ephedrine, the base ingredient in methamphetamine. Over the past year,
Mexico's seizures of all of these drugs have fallen, and in the case of
heroin and cocaine, substantially. State Department figures show that
Mexico's drug seizures also dropped in the 1996-1997 year: heroin by 68
percent, methamphetamine by 77 percent and ephedrine by 91 percent.

Mexico's military anti-drug force, the Center for Anti-Narcotics
Information, is often unwilling to even pretend to aid U.S. law
enforcement. In one particularly naked example reported by the Times, U.S.
narcotics officials gave their Mexican counterparts the home addresses and
telephone numbers of two of Cancun's primary traffickers, Ramon Alcides
Magana and Albino Qunitero Meraz -- and still, the Mexican officers could
not manage to find their quarry.

Mexico has never extradited a single major drug trafficker to the United
States. Zedillo's government, like Mexican governments before him, refuses
to allow U.S. officials to search boats in its waters for illegal drugs,
and it refuses to allow U.S. agents to carry sidearms while in Mexico. This
latter refusal has wrecked the U.S.-Mexican front-line Bilateral Border
Task Forces. Last March, the Times reported that, for more than a year,
agents from the DEA, FBI and U.S. Customs assigned to the force refused to
cross the border into Mexico.

And finally, this tale from the annals of full cooperation: Last May, a
U.S. Customs investigation into drug money-laundering smashed Mexico's
narco-dollars network, arresting 167 people, including 26 Mexican bankers.
The response of the Zedillo government that Clinton praises? It has refused
to honor U.S. requests to extradite five suspects in the case. To the
contrary, until the looming certification deadline forced it to back down,
Zedillo's government threatened to demand the extradition to Mexico of the
Customs agents who broke the case.

But all of this is perhaps superfluous detail. All you really need to know
about Clinton, Mexico and certification is this truth, uttered by a wisely
anonymous administration official to the Times: "This is not about what
Mexico has done. This is about convincing the Hill that whatever Mexico has
done is enough." Exactly. Whatever.