MEXICO STRAINS DRUG ALLY STATUS

CONGRESS MAY LIFT CERTIFICATION

Mexico has produced such dismal results in combating drug trafficking in
the past year that Mexican and U.S. officials say they are braced for an
aggressive attempt by the U.S. Congress to decertify its southern neighbor
as an ally in the drug war and add it to the "black list" of nations judged
failures in the antidrug effort.

By almost any measure, Mexico made no significant progress in reducing drug
trafficking and corruption in 1998, and in many categories actually showed
poorer results than in the previous year, according to U.S. officials and a
review of U.S. performance expectations. Even some Mexican officials agreed.

"What grade do you give them if they have really done nothing?" said a U.S.
official involved in monitoring Mexico's anti-drug efforts. "You would have
to give them a D-minus or an F."

In Mexico last year, seizures of cocaine, marijuana and heroin fell
significantly. Drug arrests declined, and the number of drug investigations
either underway or completed dropped 14 percent from 1997. There was a drop
in the number of poppy fields destroyed and clandestine drug laboratories
that were found and dismantled. Confiscations of drug-carrying cars, trucks
and boats also declined. Seizures of ephedrine, the key ingredient in
methamphetamine -- commonly known as speed -- and of opium gum, a poppy
residue used to make heroin, were just over half the number of 1997.

Even worse, in the view of many U.S. officials, was Mexico's failure to
show progress in several critical measures that are considered the true
gauge of its resolve to combat the illegal drug trade: No major
Mexican-born drug kingpin has ever been extradited to the United States;
the country's new money-laundering laws have yielded only one conviction;
and corruption continues to pervade the government, including within elite
units specially trained or vetted by the U.S. military, CIA and law
enforcement agencies.

The country's two main illegal drug organizations -- the Tijuana and Juarez
cartels -- still operate with few restraints. A third, the once dismantled
Gulf cartel, is back in business. And even when kingpins were arrested,
they often evaded justice. In one recent case, sources said, a top
lieutenant in the Juarez cartel allegedly paid millions in bribes to
Mexican army officials to be released from jail.

Today, drug and money-laundering charges filed against three alleged
methamphetamine kingpins who were captured by Mexican police -- the Amezcua
brothers of Guadalajara -- were dismissed. One of the brothers is in jail
on a weapons conviction; the other two are being held largely on the
strength of extradition requests from the United States. On Monday, a
federal judge in Mexico City ruled against the extradition of one of the
brothers.

One of the year's biggest law enforcement disappointments stemmed from a
U.S. sting operation that Mexico said was conducted without its knowledge.
After U.S. Customs charged 26 Mexican bankers with money-laundering
following an undercover operation called the Casablanca sting, some Mexican
officials threatened to indict and seek the extradition of the U.S. agents
involved on charges that they violated Mexican sovereignty while working
undercover in Mexico. On Sunday, Mexico denied a U.S. request to extradite
five Mexican bankers charged in the case.

Mexican officials said they interpret the record differently. They said,
for example, that as a consequence of tougher law enforcement, large plane
loads of cocaine no longer traverse Mexico because drug traffickers have
switched to safer routes through Caribbean Sea lanes -- a shift that could
explain the reduction in Mexican cocaine seizures last year.

Mexican officials noted that of the 10 people on Mexico's list of
most-wanted kingpins when President Ernesto Zedillo took office, six are in
prison and another is dead. Only the three Arellano Felix brothers --
leaders of the Tijuana cartel -- remain at large.

"Of course we cannot destroy all the cartels in one day, but we are working
in a clean, honest, loyal and especially in a very intensive way, risking
our lives, risking everything and working very hard to fight organized
crime," said Eduardo Ibarrola, a top official in the Mexican attorney
general's office.

How well Mexico has done in the drug war is more than an academic debate.
Under U.S. law, the president must certify by March 1 of every year whether
countries that are major drug producers or transshipment areas are "fully
cooperating" in the drug war. If not, those nations lose a host of economic
and trade benefits. The White House also has the option of decertifying a
country while waiving the sanctions in the national interest.

President Clinton, who plans to visit Mexico for meetings with Zedillo on
Feb. 14 and 15, is expected to approve Mexico's certification. But
administration officials are concerned that Mexico's weak 1998 record will
prompt a concerted effort by some members of Congress to overturn that
decision. Last year, the list of decertified countries included Iran,
Nigeria, Afghanistan and Burma.

Members of Congress point to the administration's 12-point checklist for
certifying Mexico and say that almost none of the objectives -- such as
extraditing Mexican drug traffickers, curbing corruption and prosecuting
more drug kingpins -- have been met.

Rep. John L. Mica (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Subcommittee on Criminal
Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources, has said there would be strong
support this year to overturn Mexico's certification. Short of that, he
said, Congress might "look very specifically at international trade issues
to get leverage to ensure action" by Mexico. "Mexico has made only minimal
progress," Mica said. "They have been heavy on the rhetoric and light on
the action."

Senior administration officials said they know they are facing a hard sell
on Capitol Hill. "Opponents of certification require more than good faith
efforts from Mexico -- they want results, including extraditions of Mexican
nationals, more prosecutions of corrupt officials and more than paper
agreements about cooperative law enforcement arrangements," said an
internal White House document obtained by The Washington Post.

"Without strong statistical evidence, our supporters [in Congress who back
certification] may very well become opponents," the document warned. "They
have made it known to us that they . . . need more and better evidence of
cooperative efforts. By this, they mean evidence of outcomes."

That could come soon, following a well-established pattern in which Mexico
delivers a sensational arrest around the time of certification. According
to another White House document, the Mexican government is "reportedly
working out final details before taking action against Quintana Roo Gov.
Mario Villanueva for drug-related crimes."

Villanueva, a member of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, is
the focus of a joint U.S.-Mexico drug investigation for his alleged role as
the chief protector of the Juarez cartel on the Yucatan Peninsula, which
has become one of the principal transit points for shipment of Colombian
cocaine to the United States.

Mexican newspapers have reported that investigators found millions of
dollars in overseas bank accounts tied to Villanueva. Some U.S. officials
say acting against a governor would offer a sign that Mexico is willing to
tackle high-level drug corruption in the ruling party. Villanueva has
repeatedly denied any connection with drug trafficking.

Reflecting the same frustration felt by his U.S. counterparts, one Mexican
government official said that if the certification decision were based
solely on concrete results, even he would have to vote to decertify his
country. But, he continued, the decision also should weigh the effort and
progress Mexico is making and the potentially disastrous political and
economic ramifications for both countries if the United States were to make
an international pariah of its southern neighbor and second-biggest trading
partner.

Barry R. McCaffrey, the Clinton administration's drug-policy director, said
he "substantively disagreed" with critics of Mexico's anti-drug efforts,
asserting that the country's senior leadership is committed to rooting out
corruption and fighting drug trafficking. "They are struggling to deal with
the problem," he said. "The struggle can be interpreted as either evidence
of the sorry state of affairs or evidence that some people are trying to do
the right thing."

Not all the news from Mexico was bad last year. It spent about $770 million
on counter-drug programs and more than 26,000 soldiers and government
employees were involved in the drug battle. The number of acres of
marijuana fields destroyed by the army grew by 1.8 percent. More guns and
airplanes were seized than in 1997. The amount of drug money confiscated
more than doubled. Methamphetamine seizures grew by 72 pounds.

Juan Rebolledo, undersecretary for North America and Europe in Mexico's
Foreign Ministry, said certification is a "political process" with no
"clear criteria." But if Mexico were judged qualitatively, he said, critics
would see that it has added reforms and strategies to increase its
drug-fighting capacity dramatically. Last week, for instance, Mexico
unveiled a three-year, $400 million plan to beef up drug interdiction
efforts with new high technology equipment to track the flow of cocaine and
heroin and improved vetting and training programs. About two-thirds of the
cocaine sold in the United States comes through Mexico.

A recent incident demonstrates why U.S. officials sometimes question
whether significant progress is really being made. About three months ago,
Gilberto Garza Garcia, 39, a top lieutenant in the Juarez cartel, was
arrested on drug charges but was then allowed to escape after allegedly
paying what sources said was a multimillion-dollar bribe to Mexican army
officials. Garza Garcia was apprehended a few weeks ago on an island off
the coast of Venezuela and has been returned to Mexican custody, sources said.

"We believe we have a narco-state just across the border," said a
Republican congressional aide. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich "always
bought the Wall Street line that decertifying was bad for business. This
year we won't have to worry about that crowd or the NAFTA crowd," he said.
He was referring to concerns among some analysts about the impact of
threatened economic sanctions on the U.S.-Mexican partnership in the North
American Free Trade Agreement.