CLINTON INDICATES HE WILL SUPPORT MEXICO ON DRUGS

MERIDA, Mexico -- President Clinton said here on Monday that "Mexico should
not be penalized" for its performance in the fight against illicit drugs,
leaving little doubt that he plans to recommend the country to Congress
this month as a reliable partner in the antidrug effort.

With President Ernesto Zedillo listening at his side during a speech that
capped a 23-hour visit here, Clinton praised what he characterized as the
sincerity and valor of the Mexican campaign against drugs and drug-related
corruption.

"I want to acknowledge Mr. Zedllo's efforts in Mexico's interests to root
out this scourge," Clinton said to the sustained applause of Mexican and
American officials. "Much has been said in my country about the extent of
the problem we face. But let's not forget that what we know in America
comes largely from Mexico's brave efforts to get to the truth and air it.
Mexico should not be penalized for having the courage to confront its
problems."

Clinton and Zedillo presided over an array of discussions among Cabinet
members from both governments on immigration, trade, conservation and other
issues. But because the Clinton administration has to report to Congress in
two weeks on the cooperation by nations viewed as major drug producers and
transporters, the drugs theme appeared to dominate the meetings here.

In recent days, some American law-enforcement officials have expressed the
view that Mexico's antidrug efforts do not merit a positive report. The
annual White House review of Mexico's drug performance, those officials
say, has become less a study in what Mexico has accomplished than an
exercise in convincing Congress that what has been done is sufficient.

A negative recommendation, called decertification, would set in motion
American trade and economic sanctions against Mexico and send relations
into a crisis.

In meetings on Sunday evening and on Monday, Clinton and members of his
Cabinet heard aides to Zedillo, led by Interior Minister Francisco
Labastida, summarize recent antidrug efforts and discuss a recently
announced $500 million initiative. It centers on buying radar planes,
amphibious boats and other equipment to step up efforts to interdict
traffickers and deploying a new national police force.

In his own speech to several hundred American and Mexican officials and
dignitaries immediately before Clinton's, Zedillo called the initiative
"the most ambitious strategy in our history of combatting narcotics.

"We've undertaken this fight because we know its our duty and because we
know it's the duty of all nations," Zedillo said.

Earlier, while meeting Zedillo at a private hacienda outside Merida,
Clinton was asked by reporters whether he intended to certify the drug
cooperation. He did not answer directly, but left little doubt about his
intentions as he spoke about the Mexican narcotics industry that smuggles
an estimated $15 billion worth of drugs into the United States each year.

"The fundamental question is: would we be better off fighting it together
or separately?" Clinton said.

Clinton, his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and hundreds of aides traveled
to this capital of the Yucatan peninsula on Sunday afternoon for his 10th
meeting with Zedillo since the Mexican leader's election in 1994. This was
also Clinton's first foreign venture since his acquittal on Friday in his
Senate impeachment trial.

If the tone adopted by Clinton and Zedillo when talking about drug issues
was invariably somber, at other times it was cordial and at times
exuberantly friendly. The two presidents embraced at the Merida airport
after Clinton's arrival on Sunday and exchanged jokes before their public
addresses on Monday.

On Monday afternoon, Mexican and American officials signed at least six
modest agreements on topics ranging from cooperation in fighting forest
fires to controlling tuberculosis.

Attorney General Janet Reno and Mexico's foreign minister, Rosario Green,
signed a joint statement on controlling border violence, committing both
countries to improve cross-border communication when "conflicts, assaults,
violence and other threats to public safety occur along the border." In the
same statement, the two governments pledged to develop programs to train
police to respond to violent incidents without killing civilians.

The American delegation brought with it commitments from the Export-Import
Bank of the United States to provide up to $4 billion in loans and loan
guarantees over two years to support increased American exports to Mexico.
The fresh money gave officials of both countries the opportunity to praise
the North American Free Trade Agreement, whose provisions, they said, have
allowed Mexico to surpass Japan as the United States' second-largest export
market, after Canada.

An air transportation agreement signed on Monday will greatly expand air
services between the United States and Mexico, officials of both countries
said. Currently, American and Mexican airlines have fewer than 100 of the
so-called code-sharing arrangements that allow airlines to sell seats under
their own name on another airline's flights. Applications for code-sharing
arrangements on some 10,000 additional air routes are pending, and the
agreement signed on Monday will allow many of those applications to be
approved, the officials said.

If the meetings here were dominated by the upcoming drug certification,
they produced no major new anti-drug agreements. Meeting with reporters on
Monday afternoon, however, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, Clinton's drug control
policy adviser, held up a copy of a document he called "Performance
Measures of Effectiveness," which he said was a list of "82 variables"
which both governments will monitor to ensure that both sides are
cooperating fully in anti-drug efforts.

A reporter's question suggested that the document might be intended
primarily at marshaling support for a drug effort that is flagging on both
sides of the border. McCaffrey disagreed.

"These are real documents, this is a real partnership," he said. "There are
planes, boats, training seminars, intelligence-sharing. There is reality
behind all this."

American officials estimate that two-thirds of the Colombian cocaine
consumed in the United States crosses through Mexico, and Mexico is also a
major producer of marijuana, heroine and amphetamines. Over the past year,
the acreages of drug crops eradicated by Mexican soldiers and the tonnages
of narcotics seized by police declined. None of the biggest traffickers
were arrested, and none of those already jailed whose extradition the
United States has requested were handed over.