U.S. Ready to Provide Helicopters, Radar to Mexico for Anti-Drug Effort : War on cocaine: The aircraft will enable drug agents to move quickly against smugglers’ planes. The aid package may total $65 million.

The United States is preparing a landmark anti-drug package to provide Mexico with millions of dollars in weapons-equipped helicopters, radar and other advanced equipment to intercept South American cocaine shipments before they enter the United States, according to Mexican and U.S. officials.

The aid, estimated to be worth up to $65 million, was developed by a National Security Council task force as an emergency Bush Administration response to shifts in drug-trafficking practices that have made Mexico the point of entry for an estimated 70% of the cocaine used in the United States.

The package is the latest example of increased anti-drug cooperation between Mexico and the United States, despite recent public frictions.

Officials in Mexico and Washington said the central element in the package is a fleet of nine helicopters to ferry teams of Mexican lawmen on quick-response raids against drug-smuggling planes as they land near the U.S.-Mexican border.

Drug traffickers are flying Colombian cocaine in bulk to remote landing strips just south of the border and then dividing their cargo into smaller quantities, to be smuggled across the frontier to markets in the United States.

An official in the Mexican attorney general’s office said there is general agreement about the need for U.S. aid and that about 50 police officers began flight training early this year at a military base in Guerrero state in anticipation of the helicopters’ arrival.

The aircraft are to be turned over to the government of Mexico from existing U.S. stocks and flown only by Mexican pilots, officials of both countries said.

Such a transfer of U.S. military equipment would require President Bush to issue a special finding, officials in Washington said. They said the President is prepared to sign such a document as soon as final details of the plan are approved by the Mexican government.

“We’re ready to go as soon as they tell us what they want,” a senior Administration official said. But others cautioned that it could take months for the equipment to arrive in Mexico.

U.S. officials have been unusually closed-mouthed about the new assistance plan out of concern that its premature disclosure might embarrass the Mexican government and cause it to withhold support.

A senior anti-drug working group, headed by NSC counter-narcotics chief David C. Miller, decided in principle June 25 to extend to Mexico the kind of assistance provided earlier this year to the coca-producing nations of Peru, Colombia and Bolivia, officials in Washington said.

“There was concern that Mexico was being left out,” a senior Administration official said. “Everybody agreed it would be foolhardy if that were to continue.”

Pentagon and State Department officials met with Foreign Minister Fernando Solana and Atty. Gen. Enrique Alvarez del Castillo here Monday to work out details. Heading the U.S. delegation were Ambassador John D. Negroponte and James F. Hoobler, deputy assistant secretary of state for narcotics matters.

After the meetings, Solana issued a statement “reiterating on behalf of the Mexican government our willingness to continue collaborating in the fight against international drug trafficking, which Mexico considers an issue of . . . national security.”

President Carlos Salinas de Gortari’s government has been working closely with the United States on anti-drug efforts, but relations soured earlier this year over the kidnaping of a Guadalajara gynecologist, Humberto Alvarez Machain, to stand trial in Los Angeles in the 1985 torture-murder of a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent. The abduction was orchestrated by a DEA operative.

The controversy prompted a review of the DEA’s role in Mexico and a request by the Mexican government to send Federal Judicial Police to work in the United States, as DEA does here. The official in the attorney general’s office said several Mexican agents would be sent to areas of “high cocaine consumption” such as Los Angeles, New York and Chicago, as well as to border states.

Salinas has been criticized by his political opposition for allowing American P-3 radar aircraft to cross through Mexican airspace on anti-drug missions and allowing U.S. officials to establish a counter-narcotics tactical analysis team at the U.S. Embassy. The role of the joint Defense Department-DEA team is to relay intelligence from the U.S. military, the CIA and other agencies to Mexico’s Northern Border Response Team.

The operation is designed to use U.S. airborne radar to pick up drug flights as they leave South America and feed details of flight times and routes to the strike team in northern Mexico. The joint U.S.-Mexican efforts have been responsible for a series of major busts near the border this year.

The final U.S. assistance package is almost certain to include specialized radar to enable Mexican government aircraft to track the smuggling planes themselves and communications equipment to speed the information to the Mexican strike team. In addition, officials expect the package to include more ordinary law-enforcement equipment, such as new vehicles for anti-drug police.

Officials said they could not put a specific price on the package until it is completed.

Sources said President Bush is likely to authorize the assistance package under the same emergency 506(A) provisions he invoked last year to send a $65-million package to the government of Colombia to bolster its war against that country’s cocaine cartels.

Officials in both countries say the response of the Mexican strike team has been hindered by lack of adequate transportation. The helicopters that Mexico is to receive, probably Bell 212s or Huey UH-1Hs, would add speed, firepower and capacity to move police.

The estimated 50 anti-drug helicopters Mexico now owns, designed to spray herbicides on marijuana and poppy crops, are too small and lightweight to confront drug planes.

Said an official from the Mexican attorney general’s office, “Our goal is to stop (the traffickers) from killing so many of our police.”

The attorney general’s office oversees the Federal Judicial Police, which includes anti-narcotics authorities.

The aid to the Northern Border Response Team comes at a time when the strike team is expected to play an increasingly important role in Mexico’s anti-drug efforts. President Salinas last week eliminated all Federal Judicial Police roadblocks because of charges of widespread human rights abuses.

Mexican officials said 11 of the record 24 tons of cocaine confiscated in Mexico so far this year were seized at roadblocks. But human rights groups said the roadblocks allowed police to shake down Mexican citizens.

Miller reported from Mexico City and Jehl from Washington.