Mexico Spurns All Foreign ‘Military’ Aid in Drug War

In a blunt warning that could lead to the withdrawal of a secretive new U.S. military team from Mexico City, the president of Mexico declared Monday that his government will not permit any foreign “military unit” to assist its anti-drug efforts.

The statement by President Carlos Salinas de Gortari came in response to a report by The Times last week that the U.S. military had installed a counter-narcotics group in the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City to relay intelligence and help plan operations for a new Mexican anti-drug strike force.

Bush Administration officials held out hope that the eight-man team might be exempted from any ban because it does not participate directly in counter-narcotics operations. But the officials said they fear that a public backlash in Mexico may leave the Mexican president no choice but to take a tough stance.

The episode illustrates anew the sensitivities and potential pitfalls that confront an Administration effort to expand the international drug war.

“There are just a lot of things that we can do only as long as they remain quiet,” one senior U.S. counter-narcotics official said Monday.

Salinas, meeting with reporters as part of a private visit to the United States, sounded emphatic when questioned about the U.S. military team.

“No military unit will be accepted in Mexico,” the president said.

“This was very clearly talked about with President Bush last night.”

But U.S. officials said that they are unsure how to interpret Salinas’ comment. A separate statement issued on behalf of the Mexican president had ruled out the participation of “any foreign military unit” in anti-drug operations. However, it noted obliquely that “military attaches” would merely be expected to adhere to diplomatic standards.

A State Department spokesman said that the Administration will have no official comment on the dispute. Another source said that the Administration has made a deliberate decision to “avoid fanning the fire” and will wait for the Mexican government to clarify its position.

The developments came as, separately, Salinas and President Bush announced that they will begin preliminary work on a broad free-trade agreement between their countries. They plan to launch formal negotiations on such an accord by early December, when Bush is expected to visit Mexico.

Salinas said that the pact, which would represent a dramatic reversal of Mexico’s previous inward-looking economic policies, would not only cover trade in goods, but would include rules governing foreign investment and protection for intellectual property as well.

In a concession to the United States, however, Salinas apparently agreed to delay deciding how to handle emigration by Mexican workers, which has become a thorny issue in the United States. Earlier Mexico had signaled a desire for free movement of workers to be part of the accord.

Salinas told reporters that his country will insist on exempting a few key industries such as petroleum production and electric power generation. Mexico’s constitution requires, as a matter of sovereignty, that they be controlled by the government, he said.

On another sensitive issue, Salinas asked Bush during their Sunday night meeting to help safeguard the rights of Mexican migrant laborers working in the United States, according to a Mexican government account of the meeting that was made available Monday.

The account suggested that Salinas has taken an unusually hard line on counter-narcotics issues, stating at one point that Mexico will enact new rules to govern the activities of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents working in Mexico. The language appeared to reflect lingering Mexican sensitivities over the DEA-supported abduction of a Mexican doctor facing trial in Los Angeles in the murder of a U.S. drug agent.

U.S. and Mexican officials said that the separate controversy over the American military team had been made more serious by an apparent failure on the part of the United States to anticipate how sensitive the issue could become if made public.

The officials, who insisted on anonymity, said that the United States apparently had discussed the matter only with the office of Mexico’s attorney general and not with the Foreign Ministry or the office of the president. Officials in those branches of government were enraged to learn that they had not been consulted.

In a whirlwind day in Washington on Monday, however, Salinas concentrated his attentions almost exclusively on economic issues. He met with Secretary of State James A. Baker III, who has been a leading proponent of a Mexico-U.S. free-trade agreement, and mounted a preliminary effort to persuade members of Congress to support the arrangement, once it has been negotiated.

Initial reaction from lawmakers was positive but cautious. Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Tex.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said later that Salinas “made a persuasive presentation” and that the prospects for such a free-trade accord “are good.”

But Bentsen cautioned that “the negotiations will be difficult and they’ll take some time, principally because of the difference in wages between our two countries.”

And House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.) sent a letter to President Bush urging that both sides undertake “extensive consultations,” especially with labor and “import-sensitive” industries, which fear such a pact might cost U.S. jobs. California agricultural interests are among those that feel threatened by free trade with Mexico.

Late Monday, Salinas continued his lobbying for the pact and for U.S. investment, taking his message to the business community. He told the Business Roundtable, a group of U.S. industrialists, that “a transformation of major proportions and lasting consequences” is taking place “to the south of your border.”

Earlier, the Mexican leader told a group of journalists that Mexico “will not be able to provide what the Mexican people want and need” if it is left out of the push toward market-oriented economies and new trade liberalization agreements.

All sides appeared to agree that formal negotiations on a U.S.-Mexican free-trade pact should not get under way in earnest until after the completion of the Uruguay Round of global trade-liberalization talks now going on in Geneva. The talks are slated to end in early December.

U.S. Trade Representative Carla A. Hills had expressed some concern that negotiations over a possible U.S.-Mexican pact might distract from the broader trade-liberalization talks, which are the United States’ No. 1 trade priority this year. Mexico supports the Uruguay Round.

The United States signed a free trade pact with Canada two years ago. Salinas said Monday that Mexico also may seek negotiations with Ottawa after the accord with the United States has been signed.