U.S. EFFORTS TO TRAIN MEXICAN ANTI-DRUG FORCE FALTERS

WASHINGTON -- An ambitious U.S. effort to help train and equip Mexico's
armed forces to pursue drug smugglers is in a shambles, officials of both
countries say, souring U.S. relations with an ally that Washington has
worked intensely to court.

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. The helicopter fleet has been grounded by mechanical problems,
and angry Mexican generals are sharply cutting the number of troops they
will send to train.

According to U.S. intelligence reports, the drug flights that the plan was
designed to combat have virtually ceased. But that appears to be because the
traffickers turned to smuggling schemes like containerized shipping before
the enforcement strategy got off the ground. The flow of drugs into the
United States has continued apace.

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 altogether.

"The question, basically, is: How do we get out of this box?" a Clinton
administration official said. "We will talk about the plan that they come up
with, and we will talk about whether we want to support that plan."

The conflict underscores the competing agendas that the Pentagon and the CIA
have encountered in Latin America as they have tried to use the fight
against international drug traffickers to remake their old alliances with
military forces in the region.

Like its counterparts in Colombia and Peru -- and like the Pentagon
itself -- the Mexican military seized on the drug fight as a mission of
growing importance and as a way to protect its budgets after the Cold War.
But the Mexican commanders have pursued the effort with secrecy and
independence, raising questions about whether the United States is
strengthening powerful and sometimes autonomous military forces at the
expense of civilian institutions like the courts and the police.

"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 United
States' relationship with the Mexican armed forces is better than it was
several years ago. They say that the CIA's collaboration with a small
drug-intelligence unit of the Mexican army, while largely secret, has been
reasonably successful. And they emphasize that they turned to the Mexican
military only after President Ernesto Zedillo did so himself, giving his
generals a new public security role because the corrupting influence of the
drug trade had so paralyzed the federal police.

Clinton administration officials are still quick to say any long-term
solution to Mexico's criminal-justice problems must focus on civilian
institutions. But they also continue to spend considerably more on anti-drug
training for the military than they have on court officers and the police,
and they have largely approved as the Mexican armed forces have steadily
expanded their influence over a range of law-enforcement programs.

"From the start, all of us have believed that if you don't have a judicial
system and a police force that are responsive to the elected civilian
leadership, you're in trouble," the White House drug policy director, Gen.
Barry McCaffrey, said.

Checked-by: Rolf Ernst