U.S. Embassy Contradicts CIA Chief on Mexico

The U.S. Embassy issued a statement Thursday contradicting CIA Director William H. Webster’s assessment that Mexico’s economic and political condition is fragile and that the country is potentially unstable.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for President Carlos Salinas de Gortari charged that Webster’s remarks at a breakfast meeting with reporters and editors of The Times’ Washington Bureau “reflect a profound misunderstanding” of Mexico. He asserted that the CIA director was seeking to increase his budget.

At the Wednesday breakfast, Webster said that he needs bipartisan support for covert action to counter growing unrest in Latin America. He expressed particular concern about Mexico, saying that “the United States has enormous counterintelligence responsibilities and concerns” in the country.

The embassy’s statement, sent to the Mexican Foreign Ministry and the press, said that Webster was “addressing a domestic audience.” The Bush Administration’s assessment of Mexico “is well documented and may be at variance with the version given in the Los Angeles Times and attributed to Mr. Webster,” the statement said.

The embassy reiterated Administration support for the Salinas government, quoting President Bush as he accepted the credentials of Mexican Ambassador Gustavo Petricioli in Washington this week.

“(Mexico) has taken many courageous and far-sighted steps in restructuring the economy and opening its markets to international competition,” the embassy quoted Bush as saying. “These actions will undoubtedly restore Mexico to vigorous economic growth.”

A severe economic crisis for the last six years has contributed to the rise of a strong leftist political movement in Mexico and erosion of support for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which has ruled for 60 years.

Salinas won the July 6 election with the lowest margin of support ever given to a presidential candidate of the PRI, as the ruling party is known.

Without differentiating among Latin American countries, Webster spoke of “coup plotting.” He said the survival of some democracies depends “upon the attitude of their military and the capacity of their military to maintain law and order.”

But in Mexico, observers noted that there are no signs whatsoever that the military is considering a coup and that there are no indications of movement toward violent revolution. While the Mexican people seem to be searching for political change, they look with fear at upheavals in Central America and recall their own violent, revolutionary history before the PRI came to power, observers said.

In Los Angeles, Salinas spokesman Otto Granados told editors of The Times that Webster’s remarks “reflect a lack of knowledge of political phenomenon and the political reality in Mexico.”