CLINTON TO GO TO MEXICO

WASHINGTON (AP) White House officials admit that Mexico still has a
"tremendous problem" with drug trafficking but are praising its eradication
efforts in advance of President Clinton's two-day trip there that begins
Sunday.

Mexico's war against drug traffickers, highlighted by a new $400 million,
land-sea-and-air battle plan, tops the agenda for Clinton's meetings with
Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo.

The setting will be the Yucatan Peninsula, a tourist haven where the two
presidents and their wives will have a Valentine's evening dinner before
Clinton and Zedillo get down to business on Monday. They have met seven
times previously.

In addition to drugs, their agenda includes trade, migration and the
environment.

Their meetings will take place against a background of a congressionally
mandated review of Mexico's cooperation with U.S. counternarcotics efforts
in the past year.

Mexico could face stiff economic sanctions if it receives a failing grade,
but all signs point to a U.S. decision to "certify" Mexico as fully
cooperative as it has been all 12 years the process has been in effect.

Taking nothing for granted about Clinton's decision, however, Mexico
declared "total war" against the drug chieftains Feb. 4 through a program
that specifies early detection of drug flights and sea shipments and a
stepped-up counternarcotics role for the Mexican army.

The three-year plan contemplates purchases of aircraft, ships, radar, X-ray
equipment and other items.

Clinton's national security adviser, Sandy Berger, said Friday that drug
control is an important part of the U.S. agenda. In the two years since
Clinton and Zedillo established a set of common objectives, he said, "We
have seen Mexico extradite fugitives, eradicate thousands of acres of opium,
criminalize money-laundering and institute a new screening process for
law-enforcement officials."

"Still, obviously this is a tremendous problem for Mexico, but one that they
are tackling," he said.

Last year, with the certification decision just weeks away, the two
countries announced a plan outlining joint projects against drug
consumption, money laundering, gunrunning and narcotics smuggling.

The review process targets about 30 countries deemed to be sources for drugs
or through which drugs transit. Only a handful were decertified a year ago.

While seemingly assured a clean bill of health from Clinton, there were no
such assurances that Mexico's expected certification won't be overturned by
Congress, where skepticism runs deep about the Zedillo government's
performance.

Quoting from an internal White House memo, The Washington Post reported last
week that congressional opponents of certification want more than good-faith
efforts "They want results, including extraditions of Mexican nationals,
more prosecutions of corrupt officials and more than paper agreements about
cooperative law-enforcement arrangements."

With a two-thirds vote, the Congress could overturn a Clinton certification,
which officials fear could trigger a nationalist backlash in Mexico.

The certification process is widely disliked in Mexico. "It does more harm
than good," says Rafael Fernandez de Castro, a Mexican academic on leave
this year at the Brookings Institution. He said the process fuels
nationalistic feelings that impair cross border relations.

Robert Leiken, an expert on Mexico at Brookings, says Mexicans are baffled
by the process because they believe the drug problem exists only because of
the demand for narcotics in the United States.

Leiken questions whether it is realistic to assume that Mexico will be able
to deal with narcotics traffickers, given its inability to cope with a
steadily worsening problem of street crime.

State Department spokesman James P. Rubin acknowledged this past week that
the drug problem may be more than Mexico can handle because of the vast
resources of the drug runners.

But he noted the certification process does not take into account results.
"There is a difference between cooperation and success," he said.

Clinton's trip to Mexico and other Central American countries, originally
scheduled for last week, was postponed after the Senate set a goal of
finishing the president's impeachment trial by Friday, when he still would
have been out of the country. The Senate acquitted Clinton on Friday.

The Mexico leg was rescheduled for Sunday and Monday. He will visit
Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala in March.

Mexico is a major transit point for U.S.-bound cocaine shipments from South
America. It is also a major producer of marijuana and a significant producer
of heroin.

A delegation of Mexican officials visiting Washington admitted Wednesday
that seizures of illicit narcotics have been down over the past year. They
raised the possibility that Colombian narcotraffickers may be relying more
on routes other than Mexico for their drug shipments because of increased
law enforcement in Mexico.