PLAN TO HELP MEXICO FIGHT DRUGS FALTERS

An ambitious U.S. effort to help train and equip Mexico's armed forces to
pursue drug smugglers is in trouble because of poor planning, changed
circumstances and other problems, officials of both countries say. Three
years after the Pentagon began donating dozens of helicopters to the
Mexican army and training hundreds of Mexican soldiers in the United
States, officials have seen only a handful of the anti-drug operations
intended in the program brought to any kind of fruition.

The helicopter fleet has been grounded by mechanical problems. In part
because the helicopters are not working and because of budgetary problems,
Mexican generals are sharply cutting the number of troops they are sending
to train.

According to U.S. intelligence reports, the drug flights the plan was
designed to combat virtually have ceased. But that appears to be because
traffickers shifted to maritime shipments through the Gulf of Mexico, into
the Yucatan peninsula and up the Pacific coast, and to overland
transportation, mainly by truck.

Tensions over the failed strategy, the faltering equipment and continuing
reports of Mexican military corruption have grown serious enough, U.S.
officials said, that they have asked Mexico's commanding generals to
reassess the program.

"The answer here is that there is no silver bullet," said Jan Lodal, who,
until his recent retirement as the principal deputy undersecretary of
defense for policy, oversaw the Pentagon's anti-drug cooperation with
Mexico. "You are going to have to build an effective civilian
law-enforcement structure, and you're going to have to build it from the
ground up."

Administration officials contend that despite the tensions, the U.S.
relationship with the Mexican armed forces is better than it was several
years ago. They say the CIA's collaboration with a small drug-intelligence
unit of the Mexican army, while largely secret, has been reasonably
successful.

To transport Mexican soldiers on raids, the Pentagon donated 73 aging UH-1H
helicopters, part of an equipment transfer worth about $58 million. With no
planes to chase, Mexican commanders used the helicopters for everything
from troop transport to spraying herbicides on drug crops. But the
Vietnam-era aircraft have been plagued by mechanical problems and a lack of
spare parts, and Mexico announced in March that it would ground the entire
fleet after the U.S. Army found engine problems in all the UH-1H models.

Mexican officials have complained they were given scrap. Pentagon officials
say the problems stem from excessive and improper use of the helicopters.
The United States also gave Mexico's air force four C-26 surveillance
planes and sold the Mexican navy two Knox-class frigates.

Mexican officials complain the frigates they bought two years ago for $7
million have been unusable until recently because they were delivered
without needed equipment.

A system set up to share the Pentagon's drug intelligence directly with the
Mexican military has been kept off-line because of lingering U.S. fears
that sources of the information might be compromised.

The two militaries had agreed to consider further cooperation in areas such
as disaster relief, education and force modernization.

But now, Mexican generals have told the Defense Department they are longer
no interested in other joint projects.

Checked-by: Pat Dolan