CLINTON PLAN WOULD CURB DRUGS FROM MEXICO

By Steve Holland

MIAMI (Reuters) President Clinton promoted new successes in the war on
illegal drugs Thursday, and his drug policy chief said plans are afoot for
a huge crackdown on narcotics smuggling from Mexico into the United States.

Clinton interrupted an intense Democratic fundraising spree to take a U.S.
Coast Guard cutter through a shipping channel to a Coast Guard station.

There, he said the U.S. drug interdiction battle has enjoyed an upsurged in
arrests of traffickers in the Caribbean region and a 300 percent rise in
cocaine seizures 103,000 pounds this year.

"Thanks in no small measure to heroic efforts on the high seas, in the air,
and along our borders, the strategy is starting to show promising results,"
he told Coast Guard personnel on a hot, hazy south Florida day with a line
of Coast Guard cutters bedecked with colorful flags arrayed behind him.

His drug policy director, retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, announced that the
Clinton administration was working on a plan to dramatically reduce
crossborder drug smuggling from Mexico into the United States. That border
is blamed for much of the illegal drugs that enter the United States.

"We're going to try and stop drug smuggling into the United States across
the MexicanU.S. border in the next five years substantially stop it
while still allowing our second biggest trading partner to continue
economic cooperation," he said.

Such a massive crackdown could inflame antiAmerican passions that have
flared up in Mexico in the past.

McCaffrey, seeking a $73 million increase in his drug budget for the 1999
fiscal year, said he talked to Clinton about the idea on Thursday and was
told to have a concept ready to share by the president's State of the Union
address early next year.

He said customs agents at border crossings now rely on handheld machines
to check vehicles for drugs but that the United States was deploying large
Xray machines, designed to look through Soviet nuclear missile shipping
containers, for examining trucks for smuggled drugs.

A strong antidrug message was part of Clinton's day of politicking in
Florida, where he was attending three events raising an estimated $1.4
million for Democrats.

That included a luncheon that brought in about $400,000 for the Democratic
candidate for governor of Florida, Buddy MacKay, who is likely to face
tough competition from Republican Jeb Bush, son of former President George
Bush.

On a mission to reduce his party's $13 million debt and build up a warchest
for 1998 midterm congressional elections, Clinton told enthusiastic MacKay
boosters that Democrats may get outspent.

"It is not easy to run a campaign and they are not inexpensive," he said.
"And normally our side is running against people who have more money than
we do. But the important thing is not whether they have more, it's just
whether we have enough."

Clinton flew to Florida from New York, where he raised $1.4 million at two
events on Wednesday. His wife Hillary also showed prowess in attracting
donations by raising $500,000 at two events, in Boston on Tuesday and New
York on Wednesday.

Some MacKay supporters at the luncheon event were wearing buttons that
said, "Buddy's a Veteran, Jeb's Not."

Said MacKay: "Do you want somebody that's going to move this state
forward...or do you want somebody that's going to take us on a radical
detour and cause us to fall back?"

After a round of golf, Clinton was to attend two evening fundraisers,
picking up about $1 million, before returning to Washington.

Copyright © 1997 Reuters Limited.