U.S. Officials Caution Mexico Against Election Fraud : Politics: Christopher praises reforms but warns of consequences if the presidential vote is tainted.

In the midst of this nation’s tumultuous presidential campaign, top Clinton Administration officials gently warned the Mexican government Monday that any hints of taint in the election this fall could be disastrous.

Concluding a two-day mission here, Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Atty. Gen. Janet Reno and other top Administration officials also delivered the message that the United States supports democratic reform in Mexico.

“We applaud the far-reaching electoral reforms that Mexico has adopted over the last several years,” Christopher said. “We trust that these reforms, combined with your new election technology, will produce a free and fair election that will give all Mexicans confidence in its outcome.”

The U.S. Cabinet members’ visit was long planned as one of a series of regular meetings between the two governments.

It came, however, at a delicate time--as Mexicans are picking their next president and shortly after governing party candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio was assassinated.

Some U.S. officials worry that the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI)--which has ruled Mexico since 1929, often through vote fraud--may be tempted to tamper with the election if its successor candidate, Ernesto Zedillo, appears in danger of losing.

Officially, the Administration says it is convinced that President Carlos Salinas de Gortari’s administration plans to carry out a fair election. But Christopher repeatedly warned of the consequences if it does not. He did so subtly in a public speech at the Foreign Ministry and more bluntly in private, aides said.

Besides supporting democratic reform, he warned against corruption and praised the economic and political reforms that have made Mexico one of Latin America’s economic leaders.

“The modernizing economic reforms of the Salinas administration have made Mexico a pacesetter for the region and for the world,” Christopher said. They also have produced an era of unprecedented cooperation between Mexico and the United States, capped by last year’s passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

While continuing those reforms in the political arena, the United States wants Mexico to intensify efforts to root out government corruption, especially the political power of wealthy drug traffickers.

“To sustain trust in democracy, governments must attack the scourges of corruption and drug trafficking,” Christopher said. “Government cannot be held accountable if its power can be bought. Authority will not be respected if the rule of law can be defied with impunity.”

A Christopher aide said his warnings on free elections and corruption were deliberately understated and that State Department officials were more direct in private.

“The Mexicans read these statements very carefully and are hypersensitive to any sign that we are interfering in their internal affairs. So we didn’t want to come on too strong in public,” he said.

In private, U.S. officials also protested the Mexican government’s failure to keep Salinas’ commitment to extradite Serapio Zuniga Rios, a suspect in the rape of a 4-year-old Riverside County girl. The governments agreed to negotiate a written agreement on extradition procedures. Until it is completed, an agreement forbidding the abduction of alleged criminals and important to Mexico will not be signed.

Christopher did not meet with any of the nine presidential candidates, aides said, to avoid any appearance of U.S. meddling. He acted appalled at the suggestion, made during a news conference, that his presence could be construed as support for the government--and, by extension, the PRI.

Besides their worries about the fairness of this nation’s political system, analysts have expressed concern that Mexico’s progress toward a more open society has been threatened by a rising tide of violence, reflected in the slayings of both candidate Colosio and Tijuana Police Chief Federico Benitez Lopez, who was assassinated last month.

U.S. officials said they are concerned that both assassinations may have been ordered by powerful drug traffickers allied with anti-reformist officials.

Both U.S. and Mexican officials are becoming increasingly worried about the corrupting influence of narcotics traffic on the government here. The news weekly Proceso stated that Finance Minister Pedro Aspe Armella has acknowledged that drug traffickers have permeated practically all levels of law enforcement in Mexico. Aspe’s office could not immediately confirm that statement.

A senior State Department official said the Administration is concerned that Salinas’ drive against corruption appears to have stalled and that drug traffickers appear to have increased their influence, especially in some local areas. “The central government’s control over these things has weakened,” the official said. “There has been a kind of institutional entropy.”