WHITE HOUSE SAYS MEXICO 'COOPERATING' IN DRUG FIGHT DESPITE D.E.A. REPORT

WASHINGTON -- Despite a confidential government assessment that recent
drug-enforcement measures by Mexico have not produced "significant
results," the White House announced Thursday that the Mexican government
was "fully cooperating" in the fight against drug trafficking.

While some senior administration officials lavishly praised Mexico's
record, the confidential assessment, by the Drug Enforcement
Administration, painted a much darker picture.

It played down the impact of a major effort to overhaul the Mexican federal
police, and emphasized that corrupt officials continued to insure the
impunity of the country's biggest drug traffickers.

"During the past year," the analysis reads, "the government of Mexico has
not accomplished its counternarcotics goals or succeeded in cooperation
with the United States government."

"The scope of Mexican drug trafficking has increased significantly, along
with the attendant violence," said the assessment, a copy of which was
obtained by The New York Times. "The level of drug corruption in Mexico
continues unabated."

Mexico had been expected to win the endorsement of the White House as part
of the annual evaluation of drug-control efforts abroad, which is known as
certification. But officials acknowledged that the announcement Thursday
followed two days of often-chaotic maneuvering, and that the blunt
criticism it immediately received from both parties in Congress suggested
that the administration might have underestimated the volatility of the issue.

"We must make an honest assessment," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said
at a Senate subcommittee hearing Thursday. "And by no realistic standard
can Mexico be deemed to have cooperated fully, which is the standard of the
law."

Feinstein and other legislators said they expected considerable debate over
the administration's endorsement of Mexico, which can be overturned by
Congress. But it was unclear whether the critics have as much support as
they did last year, when the White House narrowly prevailed.

In its review of drug-enforcement programs in 30 countries considered
important to the production or transportation of illegal drugs, the
administration denied certification to Afghanistan, Burma, Nigeria and
Iran. Under the law, the United States must now withhold part of any
foreign aid those countries may receive and vote against loans they seek
from development banks.

The administration also decertified four other nations -- Colombia,
Pakistan, Paraguay and Cambodia -- but waived the penalties in the interest
of national security. Most critics of the Mexico decision argued that it
should have been placed in that category.

The decision on Colombia in effect upgraded the country's status after it
had been penalized two years in a row, and it came barely two months after
the Colombian government swept aside American appeals and allowed the
passage of a new extradition treaty that will protect drug kingpins from
the threat of prosecution in the United States.

In announcing the decision, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright suggested
that Colombia's waiver did not reflect government efforts so much as
support for the police and efforts "to lay the groundwork for increased
future cooperation."

Albright's acting deputy for international narcotics issues, Randy Beers,
also argued that Colombia was at "a critical turning point" because of the
threats posed by increasingly aggressive leftist insurgents, still-powerful
drug traffickers and a major increase in the country's cultivation of coca,
the raw material for cocaine.

A report released Thursday by the General Accounting Office, the
investigative office of Congress, contended that Colombia's decertification
had hobbled the much-praised Colombian National Police by depriving the
force of needed materiel, like explosives and ammunition.

Beers, however, contradicted the thrust of the report, and said that since
being decertified without a national-interest waiver, Colombia had actually
received more and more aid from the United States each year.

Administration officials appeared to be far less comfortable with the
contradictory evidence of drug-enforcement progress in Mexico.

Concerned that dissonant voices might compete with the certification
announcement, the White House at one point tried to stop administration
officials from testifying on the subject at a Senate hearing scheduled for
Thursday. But while the White House drug-policy director, Gen. Barry
McCaffrey, bowed out of the hearing, Thomas Constantine, the head of the
the Drug Enforcement Administration, did not.

Worried about Constantine, who is widely viewed as the most outspoken
senior official on the issue, the White House then tried unsuccessfully to
get McCaffrey back on the schedule in order to "balance" the portrayal of
Mexico, an official said.

"These are not the actions of a government that feels confident," said the
chairman of the subcommittee, Sen. Paul Coverdell, R-Ga. "They are
defensive actions."

McCaffrey has consistently taken the lead among administration officials in
praising the Mexican government publicly. Thursday, he called its
cooperation with the United States "absolutely superlative."

The State Department's explanation of the certification decision noted a
series of changes by and to Mexican law-enforcement institutions over the
last year: the creation of specialized police intelligence units; the
reconstitution of special task forces in which agents of the two countries
are to work together against traffickers along the border; an increase in
drug seizures, and some progress in efforts to insure the extradition from
Mexico of drug fugitives wanted in the United States.

But many law-enforcement officials said Mexico's history on such matters
demanded a greater skepticism. They noted that Mexico has recreated its
drug-enforcement agency three times since 1989, that no Mexican national
was in fact extradited to face drug charges in the United States, and that
the new units have made only modest progress.

The analysis by the Drug Enforcement Administration noted many of the
changes made. But it added bluntly that "none of these changes have
produced significant results."

"None have resulted in the arrest of the leadership or the dismantlement of
any of the well-known organized criminal groups operating out of Mexico,"
the analysis said. "Unfortunately, virtually every investigation DEA
conducts against major traffickers in Mexico uncovers significant
corruption of law-enforcement officials."