U.S. Drug Chief Tells Senators Mexico Merits Help, Not Criticism

By Christopher S. Wren

WASHINGTON The Clinton administration's drug policy adviser, retired
Gen. Barry McCaffrey, argued Wednesday before sometimes skeptical senators
that the best hope of stopping illegal drugs from crossing the southwestern
border lies in helping Mexico reform its corrupt police and weak legal
systems, rather than merely criticizing their flaws.

Testifying at a joint session of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and
the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control, McCaffrey said the
administration's strategy of working in partnership with Mexico to fight
drugs was beginning to reap benefits.

He said Mexico had passed laws to curb money laundering and organized
crime, was rebuilding its antidrug institutions and had agreed to
extradite Mexicans wanted in the United States on drug charges.

"Through collaboration and cooperation with Mexico and other hemispheric
partners, we are able to attack the entire chain of illegal drug
production, shipment and distribution," he said. "Close cooperation is the
key to magnifying our counterdrug efforts."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, DCalif., told McCaffrey on Wednesday that he was
"on the right track" and agreed that Mexico had made some progress, but she
said that Mexican law enforcement remained corrupt, that no Mexicans had
been extradited on drug charges, and that no major traffickers had been
arrested in Mexico.

At worst, she said, the latest report amounted to "an optimistic spin
placed on a few cosmetic concessions made by the Mexican government" under
pressure from Washington.

McCaffrey said the United States had no choice but to cooperate with Mexico
because the two countries share a 2,000mile border, American exports to
Mexico increased by 126 percent from 1990 to 1996, and one in 16 Americans
is now of Mexican descent.

The general was responding in part to senators who expressed
dissatisfaction with the administration's decision in February to certify
Mexico as a cooperative ally in the war against drugs, and with a
subsequently upbeat report on Mexico's progress submitted to Congress on
Sept. 15 by McCaffrey's office.

Sen. Paul Coverdell, RGa., and Feinstein have already warned in a joint
statement that it was "not at all clear" that Mexico would earn
Washington's certification next time.

McCaffrey told reporters later that his many meetings with Mexican
officials convinced him that they were serious about going after drug
traffickers.

In his testimony, McCaffrey reported that Mexico had already seized more
cocaine in the first eight months of 1997 29.3 metric tons than in
all of 1996 or 1995.

But Sen. Joe Biden, DDel., said Mexico remained the primary route for
cocaine entering the United States, a major source of heroin,
methamphetamines and marijuana, and a moneylaundering center. While he was
not passing final judgment, Biden said, "the decision about whether Mexico
deserves to be certified again next year will not be based on a few months,
but on the record of the entire year."

James Milford, acting deputy administrator of the Drug Enforcement
Administration, testified that his agency considered the Mexican
traffickers "a more distinct danger" than the Colombian cocaine cartels,
because the Mexicans smuggled a variety of drugs and had "a proclivity for
extreme violence."

Copyright 1997 The New York Times Company