THE STING THE MEXICANS CAN'T FORGIVE, FORGET

More than one person has his nose out of joint about this," says one drug
official of Casablanca, the undercover operation mounted on Mexico soil by
U.S. Customs and the Department of Justice without the authorization of the
Mexican government. The sting netted 167 people, including 26 Mexican
bankers, on charges of money laundering.

Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, the czar of the U.S. antinarcotics effort, found
out about the operation on television. Secretary of State Madeleine K.
Albright was kept out of the loop and complained bitterly to Treasury
Secretary Robert E. Rubin, who himself is said to have been informed about
the operation only a few months ago, even though the investigation was
initiated three years ago by the L.A. branch of Customs. It seems that even
the Casa Blanca (White House) was in the dark about the details. The result
is the most serious crisis in U.S.-Mexican relations since the Drug
Enforcement Administration kidnapped Humberto Alvarez Machain, a Mexican
implicated in the 1985 murder of DEA agent Enrique Camarena.

The Casablanca incident occurs at a time when constructive voices are
increasingly drowned out by a neo-populist coalition hurling rocks south of
the border all year round; by a relentless torrent of harsh U.S. press
coverage of Mexico, and by an ever more vitriolic certification process in
the U.S. Congress. For the average Mexican, the collective harague of Sens.
Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Jess Helms (R-N.C.)and Trent Lott (R-Miss.),
consumer advocate Ralph Nader, Patrick J. Buchanan, Ross Perot and Rep.
Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), has fused into one hostile and threatening
picture of the United States. Casablanca is the straw that breaks the
camel's back.

Although President Bill Clinton and his Cabinet rushed to make apologies to
their Mexican counterparts, "I'm sorry" was not enough for Mexico's
foreign-relations minister, Rosario Green, whose reputation as an old-style
Mexican nationalist is coming to the fore. Green brushed off U.S. apologies
for what she knows was an unintentional blunder and, instead, escalated the
conflict. She threatened to indict the U.S. Customs officers who conducted
undercover operations on Mexican soil without permission and to begin
extradition proceedings. Under Mexican law, a sting is considered illegal
entrapment. Her stance has inflamed a Washington community that wishes
Mexico would show half as much passion for extraditing drug traffickers.

Mexico's escalation of the conflict left senior White House officials
stunned and wondering whether or not the Mexicans know who their friends are
in Washington. Clinton has many flaws, but if there is one area in which he
has behaved as a statesman, it has been in U.S.-Mexicans relations. He has
taken it on the chin for the North American Free Trade Agreement, the peso
crisis and has defended bilateral antidrug efforts. But it may be especially
difficult for Clinton to go to the mat to defend bilateral relations against
critics in Congress, particularly Republican critics in an election season,
if the Mexicans are sticking it in the U.S. eye.

The Kabuki dance of injured pride and face-saving seemed to end at the U.S.
summit on drugs. After delivering a blistering speech criticizing U.S.
unilateralism and proposing a U.S.-led, global certification process,
President Ernesto Zedillo met privately with Clinton to alleviate frictions.
The annual Binational Commission reunion of the two countries' Cabinets,
which met a week later in Washington, also stressed the positive. But
lingering tensions surfaced in Albright's closing press briefing, at which
she warned Mexico against pursuing the extradition of U.S. agents. Thus, a
seemingly happy ending to the Casablanca affair may not be Act IV, but
intermission.

Meanwhile, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) introduced a resolution urging Clinton
to defend U.S.Customs agents against any extradition effort, and some
congressional staffers say it will pass if it reaches the floor. This is an
ominous prospect, given that wavering senators, who will have to vote on the
matter of certification in nine months, may wonder how they can support
certification when the Mexican seem determined to make themselves obnoxious.

Mexican calculations go beyond Casablanca to include the possibility that
certification next year may not be winnable or winnable at an unacceptably
high price. The prospect that Congress may overturn a presidential
recommendation to certify Mexico is looming. Even if a presidential veto
were exercised and sustained, such a victory would be Phyrric. "We have to
inoculate ourselves," explains one Mexican foreign ministry official, who
acknowledges that the government is considering a variety of contingencies.
The threat to investigate U.S. agents is just one sign that the Mexican
government is contemplating new options in anticipation of U.S. hostility.
Mexico is approaching a turning point where the political cost of subjecting
itself to U.S. imprecations in the name of cooperation may be higher than
the cost of alienating the United States. Mexico's presidential candidate
selection season will begin early in 1999, and continued confrontation feeds
a nationalist backlash that aides candidacies hostile to the U.S.

Ironically, confrontation is looming at a time when there are signs of
progress in the drug war. The leaders of a major Mexican methamphetamine
cartel, the four Amezcua brothers, recently were captured. Significantly,
the Mexican police team that made the arrests is one of the new, vetted
antinarcotics groups jointly trained by Mexico and the United States. The
fruits of building new Mexican law-enforcement institutions take years to
mature, but the Amezcua arrest suggests that patience is warranted by a U.S.
Congress searching for results.

Mexico needs to come to grips with the reality of the global drug trade. It
speaks often and eloquently about the need to acknowledge the global nature
of drug-related crime, but its behavior is not consistent with its analysis.
It makes no sense to turn law enforcement issues such as the extradition of
vicious criminals into points of national pride. Undercover U.S. Customs
agents are not the moral equivalent of drug traffickers, nor should they be
treated as egregious law breakers by the Mexican government. By failing to
modernize its notion of national sovereignty, Mexico has been unable to come
to grips with the realities of binational law enforcement and leaves itself
open to charges of a lack of will. Why must joint operational capabilities
in law enforcement, which is what is really needed to be effective against
transnational criminals, founder on the rock of outdated notions of sovereignty?

In the aftermath of Casablanca, the United States must reassess the lack of
coordination in the bilateral relationship. "Nobody is in charge of the U.S.
government," one U.S. Cabinet officer says, referring to inter-agency snarls
inside the Beltway and to the abduction of policy toward Mexico by
semi-autonomous law-enforcement agencies such as U.S Customs and the DEA. An
accident-prone U.S. policy toward Mexico will have a high cost as the
potential for a nationalist backlash grows south of the border.

Similarly, a reassessment of U.S. law enforcement is in order. Undisciplined
unilateralism and bilateral cooperation are incompatible. The U.S. would not
accept unilateral foreign operations in its territory. Why should we expect
the Mexican to behave differently? That Mexican worry about our blithe
disregard for the rules of the game says nothing about their commitment to
combating drug trafficking and everything about their need for assurances
that we will not abuse our superior power.

Both Mexico and the United States are reaching the limits of their ability
to absorb the political cost of sustaining bilateral antinarcotics
cooperation. The United States brought the relationship close to the brink
with a unilateral police action, and now the Mexican are taking it to the
edge with unilateral diplomatic outrage. It is time for all sides to step
back from the brink, for congressmen and diplomats alike to stop playing
politics with bilateral relations and to start examining their conscience.

Checked-by: Melodi Cornett