Under heavy U.S. pressure to produce results in the war
on drugs, Mexico's top antinarcotics official pledged
Friday a complete overhaul of his country's efforts against
traffickers.

Mariano Herran Salvatti, the new head of Mexico's
National Institute for Drug Combat (INCD), said the unit
was reviewing all its current drug investigations, and
these "could include" probes into top politicians accused
of links to traffickers. "The attorneygeneral's intention,
the intention of the Mexican government, is not to hide
anything," he told reporters. But he insisted he had no
information that would allow him to name any
"narcopoliticians".

Embarrassed by toplevel drug corruption and its failure
to snare cocaine kingpins, Mexico narrowly escaped U.S.
censure of its antidrug record Thursday when the U.S.
Senate voted for a resolution that criticized its efforts
but stopped short of administering punishment.

The Senate resolution, hailed by the Mexican government
as showing "good sense prevailed," watered down a harsher
measure passed by the House last week and was largely
symbolic, but it does require President Clinton to report
back by Sept. 1 on Mexican drug war progress.

In a news conference announced after the Senate vote,
Herran pledged to foreign correspondents Friday to carry
out a mandate given to him when he was named March 10 to
totally revamp his institution.

Herran was appointed following the firing and jailing of
his predecessor, Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, on charges
of taking bribes from a top drug lord in return for
offering him protection. The ensuing scandal was mainly
responsible for the U.S. congressional moves against
Mexico. "We are carrying out a complete revision of the
institute in order to totally restructure it," Herran said.

The government would require all present and future INCD
employees to pass a battery of lie detector, drug and
character tests and would check their wealth periodically
to guard against corruption, he said. Herran had to pass
similar tests himself before being named head of the
institute.

The institute's geographical structure and legal basis
would also be revised but Herran denied a U.S. magazine
report that Mexico would create a new institution modeled
along the lines of the American Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA).

No date has been set for announcing details of the
overhaul but the move would not be made to meet any
American deadline, Herran said.

"The planning of the actions of the institute is not
framed in time periods of 30, 90 or 120 days", he added.
"They are actions which are being planned so that, in the
shortest time possible, we can have more energetic and much
more visible results in the fight against drug
trafficking." Those results could include the arrest of the
country's most wanted drug lord, Amado Carrillo Fuentes,
Herran said. He declined to answer specific questions about
how close Mexico might be to a breakthrough in capturing
any top druglord, citing the need to keep investigations
confidential.

He also ducked questions about U.S. drug cartels and
about how much confidential information his disgraced
predecessor, Rebollo, might have leaked to traffickers.

Herran, 48, is a lawyer and former labour tribunal
magistrate from the southern state of Chiapas with no
previous narcotics experience. But he said he believed his
previous post as a deputy chief prosecutor for Mexico City
would stand him in good stead for pursuing drug
investigations.