U.S. BRUSHES OFF MEXICO NARCOTICS TRAFFIC EVALUATION

Drug Seizures Numbers Drop, Less Arrests

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 has 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
starting Sunday, 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."

The fervor with which administration officials are praising Mexico's
record - even before studying the assessments being collected from
various government agencies - underscores how for Mexico the yearly
"certification" process has become more of a joint public-relations
campaign aimed at the Congress than an objective appraisal.

"This is not about what Mexico has done," one administration

official said, speaking on

the condition that he not be identified. "This is about convincing the
Hill that whatever Mexico has done is enough."

Administration officials said their evaluation, which is ex pected by
the end of the month and mandated by a 1986 law for countries where
drugs are produced or transported, is particularly counterproductive
in Mexico.

To observe the law strictly and possibly impose the economic penalties
it contemplates, they argue, would be to place a strategic and comp I
e x relationship at risk for just one of the many interests that the
United States has in Mexico. And Mexican officials have done their
best to underscore that risk.

"I don't even want to think what decertification would provoke,"
Mexico's ambassador to the United States, Jesus Reyes Heroles, said in
an interview. "The equilibrium that underlies our relationship with
the United States would be undone."

Many analysts of Mexican politics describe such warnings as overblown.
Moreover, aides to a half-dozen Washington legislators who have played
leading roles on the drug issue say Mexico's decertification is unlikely.

The aides, speaking on the condition they not be identified. said they
expected a formal endorsement of Mexico's efforts from the
administration and then an energetic congressional effort to override
that endorsement.

But they added that they see no clear sign that they will be any more
able to reverse the certification than they were last year. when a
Senate motion disapproval gathered only votes.