Mexico Leader Scolds Quayle Over Abduction

Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari delivered a stern lecture Thursday to Vice President Dan Quayle and demanded “new rules” to govern U.S.-Mexican cooperation in anti-drug efforts, as officials scrambled to repair a potential major rift between the two countries.

Salinas’ demand, which dominated a nearly two-hour breakfast meeting between the two men and a small group of aides, was the latest move in the escalating Mexican reaction to the abduction to the United States earlier this month of a Mexican citizen, Dr. Humberto Alvarez Machain, who is a suspect in the 1985 killing of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique S. Camarena.

Salinas “expressed to me his strong displeasure” over Alvarez’s abduction, Quayle said during a 35-minute press conference after the meeting here. “He felt we needed new rules of understanding” to govern anti-narcotics operations.

Salinas did not threaten to end cooperation in anti-drug efforts or specifically demand Alvarez’s return to Mexico, U.S. officials said. They also said the Mexican president promised to persist in efforts to solve the Camarena case.

Nonetheless, U.S. officials conceded that they are increasingly worried about the impact of the Alvarez abduction.

“There could be a downward spiral that would endanger” joint programs, a senior Administration official traveling with Quayle said. “We hope not.”

Quayle attempted to reassure Mexico that President Bush “respects the sovereignty of Mexico.”

“The United States preaches and practices the rule of law,” he said at his press conference. “We will comply with the rule of law.”

Quayle also repeated the U.S. contention that “no DEA agents in Mexico were involved in this particular situation,” a carefully worded denial that does not rule out involvement by U.S. drug enforcement agents based in the United States.

But although Quayle said the Administration is “always open to ideas” about improving anti-drug cooperation, he declined to rule out further operations such as the Alvarez abduction.

Quayle also declined to make any commitments about substantial changes in Administration policies, particularly the controversial “snatch authority” that allows American agents to seize foreign citizens abroad rather than go through legal extradition procedures.

Quayle’s statement, the wording of which was worked out in part with the Mexicans, was designed to cool tempers in Mexico and to provide political help to Salinas, making it clear to the Mexican press that their president had been willing to stand up to the visiting American official.

American officials had anticipated that Salinas would raise the issue during his meeting with Quayle but admitted they were surprised by the length and intensity of his protest.

The Alvarez case took up roughly half the meeting, officials said, with most of the rest of the time devoted to trade discussions. The meeting between Quayle and Salinas was originally scheduled to run one hour.

Quayle’s brief trip to Mexico was his first to this country as vice president. He arrived Wednesday night after attending the inauguration of President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro of Nicaragua. He returned Thursday evening to Washington.

Although U.S. officials said they hope the “new rules” Salinas wants can be worked out quickly, they conceded they do not yet know how broad a change the Mexicans will demand.

U.S. drug enforcement officials are in Mexico City for an anti-drug conference and are expected to begin discussions with their Mexican counterparts immediately. A senior U.S. official conceded, however, that talks could be complicated by continuing policy differences among U.S. agencies involved, particularly between the State Department and the DEA.

Salinas offered few details about what changes he seeks but did “express his desire” that negotiations over new rules proceed rapidly so as not to force cancellation of current operations, according to an Administration official who participated in the meeting and later briefed American reporters.

Along with Quayle, U.S. Ambassador John D. Negroponte; Quayle’s chief of staff, William Kristol, and State Department counselor Robert Zoellick, a key adviser to Secretary of State James A. Baker III, participated in the meeting. Salinas was accompanied by Mexico’s ambassador to Washington and by his foreign minister and deputy foreign minister.

According to the Administration official who briefed reporters, both sides discussed the domestic political problems that the case could cause. Salinas told Quayle that he faces strong domestic political pressures about cooperation with the United States.

On the U.S. side, any “lack of cooperation by the Mexicans could be dynamite” in Congress, the official said. Many members of Congress already have criticized Mexico for lack of zeal in anti-narcotics efforts, the official noted.

Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh said Thursday in Washington that the DEA’s internal investigation of its apprehension of Alvarez is still under way and that it may not be completed before he meets next week with Mexico’s Atty. Gen. Enrique Alvarez del Castillo.

But Thornburgh emphasized that the DEA had established that none of its agents was present when Alvarez was taken from his medical office in Guadalajara, Mexico, or when he was put aboard a plane for a flight to El Paso, Tex.

Thornburgh said the DEA investigation will try to determine whether DEA agents arranged Alvarez’s apprehension through an informant in Mexico, who then was paid a $100,000 bounty for organizing the operation. A hearing on Alvarez’s arrest is scheduled for May 25 in federal court in Los Angeles.

Asked whether the incident had damaged relations between the United States and Mexico, Thornburgh said he found it “significant” that Alvarez del Castillo last week “went out of his way to assure me” that cooperation on drug enforcement would continue.

Quayle laid out for Salinas the current U.S. understanding of what happened and the U.S. contention that no DEA agents in Mexico participated in the case and that “no American agents or officials . . . violated either U.S. or Mexican law.”

U.S. officials believe Salinas may have been misinformed by his own aides about the sequence of events in the case. Administration officials are known to suspect that some high-ranking Mexican officials were involved in Camarena’s abduction and murder and may have tried to cover up the case.

According to U.S. officials, Mexican police officers arrested Alvarez on April 3 and put him on a plane to El Paso. There, American officials arrested Alvarez at the airport and took him to Los Angeles, where a federal grand jury last year had charged him with assisting in the torture of Camarena.

Officials concede that the Mexicans who seized Alvarez were provided financial “incentives” by the DEA. But the Administration’s view is that although Alvarez’s abductors might have violated Mexican law, the U.S. agents involved did nothing illegal. The Mexicans, they insist, did not act in response to an American offer of money, but, instead, took the initiative in offering to arrest Alvarez.

According to the official account, the DEA was first approached in January by Mexican judicial police who proposed swapping Alvarez for a Mexican fugitive believed to be in the United States. American officials, however, proved unable to arrest the Mexican, and officials at that point believed the matter was closed.

Some weeks later, officials say, Mexican law enforcement agents again contacted the DEA and said they might be able to deliver Alvarez without a swap. “Frankly, no one really believed them” up until the point that the Mexicans called and said Alvarez was being put on a plane to El Paso, one Administration official said.

At some point, the official conceded, DEA agents made clear that a reward for Alvarez’s capture could be paid, following standard DEA procedures. Any payments in the case would be no different than paying an informant who helps police locate a suspect in the United States, the official insisted.

Mexico City newspapers reported Thursday that the government has arrested at least four Guanajuato State Judicial Police and two civilians in connection with the abduction.

Spokesmen for the federal attorney general’s office refused to confirm or deny the arrests, but the newspaper El Universal identified the detained policemen as Rodolfo Escobar Carrillo, head of police in Silao, the town where Alvarez was taken after his abduction in Guadalajara; Urbano Cervantes, a police agent in Silao; Jesus Garcia Moreno, head of police in the city of Irapuato, and Pedro Moreno, another police agent.

The civilians were identified as Alvaro Arreguin and Javier Oliva. They are believed to be the pilot and co-pilot of the airplane in which Alvarez was flown to El Paso.

Times staff writers Ronald J. Ostrow, in Washington, and Marjorie Miller, in Mexico City, contributed to this story.