Times Listening Post Story Stirs Fuss in Mexico

Secretive U.S. efforts to halt the vast flow of illegal narcotics pouring into the United States from Mexico have stirred a new controversy here on the eve of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari’s visit to Washington.

The controversy was set off by a Los Angeles Times story reporting that the U.S. military has set up a sophisticated listening post at the American Embassy here to provide intelligence on the cocaine-laden airplanes that land with relative impunity on clandestine airstrips in northern Mexico.

The listening post, manned by an eight-man U.S. military unit, was set up three months ago to help a new Mexican task force--known as the Northern Border Response Team--intercept drug flights and curb the growing use of Mexico as a way station for cocaine shipments, according to the report in Thursday’s Times.

An embassy spokesman declined further comment, referring all questions to the federal attorney general’s office, where he said officials had been briefed on the embassy operation and its goal of furthering “counternarcotics cooperation with Mexico.”

Spokesmen for Attorney General Enrique Alvarez del Castillo told Reuters they knew nothing about any U.S. military role in Mexico’s drug war, however, and the Foreign Ministry has demanded a formal explanation from Washington.

U.S. drug experts and government officials here say President Salinas, who meets President Bush at the White House on Sunday, is firmly committed to fighting the Colombian and Mexican drug runners taking advantage of the porous 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexican border to smuggle cocaine into the United States.

But the U.S. experts say as much as 70% of the cocaine entering the United States is now coming through Mexico.