Mexico Attacks Ruling; Halts Drug War Role

In an angry protest over the U.S. Supreme Court decision on the kidnaping of Dr. Humberto Alvarez Machain, the Mexican government on Monday suspended cooperation with the United States in the fight against narcotics trafficking and called for a revision of the nations’ bilateral extradition treaty.

The Foreign Ministry called the court ruling “invalid and unacceptable” and said it “violates the essential principles of international law.”

The government urged the Bush Administration to return Alvarez Machain to Mexico.

“The Mexican government considers that any attempt to kidnap a national for trial in another country is a criminal act,” the ministry said in a communique issued late Monday.

The language was the strongest ever addressed to Washington by the Administration of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who has taken great pains to appease the U.S. government in order to achieve a North American free-trade agreement.

The Foreign Ministry communique announced the immediate suspension of all government cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

“From this date, DEA agents commissioned in Mexico may not carry out the activities that had been authorized until new criteria for cooperation have been determined that will guarantee respect for our judicial order and completely safeguard our national sovereignty,” the communique said.

It also said Mexican drug agents in the United States would suspend their activities.

Salinas, who views drug trafficking as a national security threat, has worked more closely with the Bush Administration in fighting narcotics trafficking than any previous Mexican president. He has permitted 39 DEA agents to be posted in Mexico, where they gather intelligence on drug traffickers and help the Mexican government track drug planes from South America to Mexico.

About 70% of the cocaine in the United States enters through Mexico.

Mexico receives about $50 million a year in assistance to fight drug trafficking. The government has leased 21 helicopters for interdiction and receives training and maintenance from the United States.

In addressing the Supreme Court majority’s ruling that the U.S.-Mexican extradition treaty does not specifically ban kidnaping, the government said the decision casts aside the treaty as the “only legitimate and legally recognized means of detaining a person in a sovereign state.”

It said it would seek a revision of the treaty to include a specific ban on kidnaping.

“The Supreme Court said the (extradition) treaty does not prohibit kidnaping,” noted Foreign Ministry spokesman Hector Herrera. “We are going to work with your government to reform the treaty, to write an amendment so that this situation does not repeat itself.”

The government’s outrage was echoed by Mexican political leaders and political analysts, who called the decision “arrogant” and “dangerous.”

Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, leader of the left-of-center Democratic Revolutionary Party, said: “The Supreme Court decision is full of cynicism and arrogance. It is frankly interventionist and violates the sovereignty and rules of the two countries.”

His party, he said, “cannot accept a decision that, from the outset, establishes a non-fulfillment of international treaties. We cannot accept that a foreign authority--in this case the United States--may make a decision to violate the human rights of others . . . in Mexico.”

Sergio Aguayo, an authority on U.S.-Mexico relations at the graduate Colegio de Mexico, said with this “shameful” decision, the United States was trying to put itself above international law.

“It is very dangerous. This legalizes the right of the United States to enter Mexico to kidnap,” Aguayo said.

Another expert on U.S.-Mexican relations, political scientist Carlos Rico, compared the ruling to the sentence of death imposed on British author Salman Rushdie for alleged blasphemy in his novel “The Satanic Verses.”

“Iran condemns Salman Rushdie to death according to its laws,” Rico argued. “We would not agree with their sending someone to kidnap him and take him back to Iran to stand trial. But that is just what the United States is doing.”

Rico said he recognized the problem presented by drugs but said the U.S. court decision was not the right solution.

“We are confronting a common enemy in drug trafficking that does not respect borders,” he said. “It is trans-national. We don’t have international norms to combat it. We have to develop them. But, meanwhile, in no way can we accept that, in its absence, a single country decides to apply its own law outside its borders.

He also took issue with the decision’s legal reasoning: “It is difficult to sustain the argument that everything that is not prohibited (by treaty) is permitted. U.S. military intervention is not prohibited but that does not say it is permitted. . . . “

“The (extradition) treaty lays out what can be done. There is a reason Mexico has not agreed to the extradition of its nationals,” he said.

The U.S.-Mexican extradition treaty deals with returning wanted Mexican nationals to Mexico and Americans to the United States. Mexico normally does not extradite its citizens to face trial in foreign countries, although the government has made several exceptions, most notably in April, 1989, when it turned Napa Valley winery worker Ramon Salcido over to U.S. authorities inside Mexico. Salcido had killed seven people, including his wife and two daughters, before fleeing to Los Mochis, Sinaloa, where he was arrested.

Rico said he did not believe that the issue would jeopardize the proposed free-trade agreement between the two countries and Canada.

“Neither country will allow this to derail, but the political climate is going to be more difficult,” Rico said. “The Mexican government is in a no-win situation. It has to react for internal political reasons, but there will be those in the United States who say its reaction is proof the Mexican government is not a trustworthy partner in the battle” against drugs.