3 Questioned in Mexico Bugging Case : Politics: Conservative party leaders say the suspects were caught with listening devices.

In a case that the Mexican press already is comparing to Watergate, the attorney general’s office Monday interrogated three suspects caught while allegedly bugging a meeting of the conservative National Action Party’s executive committee and stealing party documents.

National Action leaders said they nabbed the three suspects with the listening devices and documents Saturday night at a hotel in Morelia, Michoacan, where the meeting was taking place. The three were turned over to police.

Reporters and National Action leaders said that Miguel Angel Lopez, identified by the attorney general’s office as one of the suspects, told them in Morelia that he was working for a representative of the federal Interior Ministry, which oversees state security.

“According to the information we have so far, we are convinced it was an operation of the Interior Ministry, in cooperation with the state government of Michoacan,” said Antonio Lozano, deputy secretary general of National Action.

Explaining that the party was engaged in open, democratic politics, Lozano said: “There is no reason for this. It is offensive, a violation of our political rights.”

Mario Reyes, a spokesman in Morelia for the attorney general’s office, said the three suspects are being questioned but cannot not be charged until evidence has been turned over to the government. National Action leaders said they will deliver the microphones, receiver and documents to the attorney general’s office in Mexico City today.

A high-level Interior official denied that the bugging was a government operation and called it “illegal.” The official also suggested that the job was too amateurish for the government and that the left-of-center Democratic Revolutionary Party might have planted the bugs because National Action has been working in alliance with the government.

Eleven state governorships are up for election this year, including those of Michoacan and Chihuahua. National Action is believed to have a chance at winning Chihuahua, but the Democratic Revolutionary Party is the stronger opposition group in Michoacan.

The office of the president of the governmental National Human Rights Commission was found to be bugged last year. The attorney general then in office was publicly accused of planting the bugs. But the case was never solved.

Lozano said that National Action leaders found listening devices in their rooms last month during a party meeting in Mexico City.

According to Mexican press reports of the Michoacan incident, suspect Lopez said publicly that he was a member of the Mexican armed forces, working for Jose Alfredo Escobar, whom he identified as the Interior Ministry delegate in Michoacan. Escobar, who publicly denied that Lopez worked for him, is a representative of the National Security Investigation Center, a political intelligence-gathering agency under the Interior Ministry.

Another suspect was identified by the attorney general’s office as Andres Osorio Rivas, a former employee of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party’s executive committee. National Action leaders reportedly found a radio scanner and receiver with earphones in Osorio’s hotel room. Lopez and Osorio’s rooms were registered to a state government official.

In another room, National Action officials and police found a briefcase with party documents, including a copy of a speech party leader Luis H. Alvarez was to give the next day. Leopoldo Escobar, whose driver’s license was in the briefcase, is the third suspect detained for questioning, authorities said.