IHT Source: A Washington Post editorial

Reparations to Mexico?

The customarily evenmannered president of Mexico, Emesto Zedillo, snapped
his cap the other day and told the InterAmerican Press Association that
the United States should pay his country reparations for the damage that
drug trafficking has done it. The idea is absurd. From the context, Mr.
Zedillo evidently meant to express Mexico's resentment of the process by
which the United States annually threatens economic penalties against
countries it deems unreliable partners in the antidrug struggle. But his
fit of pique is bound to be taken as a flight from Mexico's own
responsibilities in that struggle. Neither side needs this sort of
contribution to the rhetorical wars.

Still, Americans, and especially those in Congress who support the annual
''certification'' exercise, need to understand its effects in the countries
it is meant to stiffen and chastise. The policy is almost universally taken
as an American flight from responsibility for the vast personal and
institutional corruption that the drug trade inflicts upon producer/transit
states such as Mexico. Huge as it is, the harm done by drug trafficking in
the United States is small next to the harm done in Mexico and points
south. That harm would not be done, or not nearly to the same degree, if
the American drug market did not provide the immense boost that it does to
the international trade.

The notion that the country that created and sustains their drug problem f
should judge and penalize them for failing to cope well with it fuels a
rage no less intense than the rage that Mexican derelictions ,fuel in America.

The fact is that two countries, not one, are accountable for the narcotics
trade. Mexico tries in its fashion and largely fails. The United States
also tries and also largely fails. The Mexicans' excuse is that their law
enforcement framework cannot withstand all the pressures ignited by
American demand. We Americans have a far superior law enforcement
framework, but it cannot fully withstand those pressures either. Senators
say it is "not at all clear" that Mexico has earned certification. But it
is not at all clear either that the United States, were it to be judged by
others, could earn the prize.

On each side there is an evident disposition to blame the other for what
are mutual frustrations. This needs to stop. Intensified enforcement
without distracting recrimination needs to become the common theme.

THE WASHINGTON POST