NEW STANDARDS SET FOR MEXICO'S ANTI-DRUG EFFORT

The 'concrete measurements' are designed to mollify Latin nations that
complained of U.S. political posturing.

Mexico City - Moving to ease a sore point in U.S.-Mexican relations,
President Clinton's top drug adviser Tuesday announced a new way to
evaluate Mexico's anti-drug effort - a method aimed at making the nations
equal partners in the drug war.

After meeting with top Mexican officials, Gen. Barry McCaffrey said
"concrete measurements" would be used to evaluate the anti-drug seizures
and arrests.

The procedure is supposed to reduce the political posturing in the
congressional certification process, which has been roundly criticized by
Mexico and several other Latin nations.

"We do believe, is supposed to reduce the political posturing in the
congressional certification process, which has been roundly criticized by
Mexico and several other Latin nations.

"We do believe, many of us, that the evidence (of the measurement
program)...over time will make irrelevant the I.S. process of
certification," said McCaffrey, who was in Mexico to coordinate anti-drug
strategy.

The U.S. government currently certifies every six months whether key
nations are cooperating in the fight against drugs. Those not certified
face economic and other sanctions.

The process infuriates officials in Mexico and other countries, who charge
that the United States creates most of the drug problem because of its vast
market for illegal narcotics.

The new evaluation system would make Mexico and the United States more
equal partners in the fight against drugs because both sides will be
obliged to report on progress.

While U.S. politicians have long called on Mexican authorities to do more
to catch drug traffickers, the tables were turned Tuesday when Mexico's
attorney general said U.S. police should be doing more to capture the
Arellano Felix brothers, who head a Tijuana-based cocaine cartel believed
to be Mexico's largest.

Attorney General Jorge Madrazo said at the news conference that concluded
the two-day meeting that the brothers probably are hiding in San Diego.

"We are perhaps not very satisfied with the United States' efforts, or they
are not very satisfied with our efforts, because at this time we do not
physically have the three Arellano Felix brothers in prison," Madrazo said.

Benjamin, Ramon and Francisco Arellano Felix are believed to be the biggest
suppliers of cocaine to the United States. Mexico has offered a $1 million
reward for each.

Ramon Arellano Felix is on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List, and federal
authorities have offered a $2 million reward for information leading to his
arrest.

McCaffrey referred questions on the druglords' whereabouts to U.S.
law-enforcement agencies such as the DEA and FBI.

Madrazo also denied that U.S. drug agents had received tacit authorization
to carry guns in Mexico. That was a sensitive issue before Clinton's visit
to Mexico in May 1997, when both nations said they had taken unspecified
steps to protect such agents.

That announcement was widely interpreted at the time as implying that the
DEA agents were given unstated approval to carry weapons on Mexican soil,
an interpretation Madrazo denied Tuesday.

"The means of protecting those agents is not by giving them arms," Madrazo said.

U.S. officials are concerned that their agents could meet a fate like that
of DEA agent Enrique Camarena, who was kidnapped Feb. 7, 1985, in
Guadalajara, Mexico, and taken to a druglord's home where he was tortured
and killed.