Probe of PRI Official’s Assassination Suggests Possible Drug Cartel Link : Mexico: Developments lend credence to ex-official’s charge that traffickers were involved in Colosio slaying.

All three suspects in the alleged plot that led to the assassination of a prominent Mexican politician are linked to the northeastern state of Tamaulipas, officials confirmed Friday, pointing the finger at a drug cartel that until this year had been overshadowed by more flamboyant Pacific Coast narcotics gangs.

Television news also reported the arrests of dozens of people in Tamaulipas, an area said to be controlled by the notorious “Gulf cartel,” which is believed to supply two-thirds of the cocaine that enters the United States.

Law enforcement officials had said previously that the murder weapon used to kill Francisco Ruiz Massieu, the reform-minded No. 2 official in the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, came from the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, an area that borders Tamaulipas.

Mexican investigators would not confirm either the report on the source of the guns or the Tamaulipas arrests.

But officials at the Chamber of Deputies confirmed Friday that Fernando Rodriguez Gonzalez--one of two men accused of paying Daniel Aguilar Trevino $17,000 to kill Ruiz Massieu--was a technical secretary of the Hydraulics Affairs Commission. Manuel Munoz Rocha, chairman of that commission, is from Tamaulipas and was said to be answering police questions.

The attorney general’s office denied reports from the government news agency, Notimex, that Rodriguez Gonzalez had been arrested.

Aguilar Trevino, who was captured at the scene of Wednesday morning’s killing, told police that he was hired by Rodriguez Gonzalez and Carlos Angel Cantu.

Cantu is from Aguilar Trevino’s hometown, Corralejo, Tamaulipas.

Developments in the investigation of the Ruiz Massieu assassination have given new credence to assertions by Eduardo Valle Espinosa, a former justice official, that the Gulf cartel was somehow involved in the March 23 killing of Luis Donaldo Colosio, the presidential candidate from the PRI, which has ruled this nation for 65 years. Valle has also said that drug dealers have infiltrated Mexican politics.

The Gulf cartel--so named because it is believed to operate mainly in states along the Gulf of Mexico--is thought to be directly connected to Colombia’s Cali cartel, law enforcement sources say. The cartel specializes in cocaine, unlike other gangs that trade in a variety of illegal narcotics. Through Cali, the Gulf cartel also has contact with Colombia-linked drug dealers in Mexico City.

The cartel’s kingpin is believed to be Juan (The Doll) Garcia Abrego, a broad-faced, 50-year-old with a mustache. He is variously said to have been born in either the violent border town of Matamoros or in Las Palomas, in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley. He developed a reputation for violence in the mid-1980s, when he was accused of the murders of Matamoros journalists Ernesto Flores and Norma Moreno; they were investigating drug trafficking in the city. Garcia Abrego is wanted in the United States and in Mexico.

While Pacific Coast drug gangs have been killing each other off in a turf war in recent years, the Gulf cartel is believed by some to have been cultivating political influence. Valle resigned in May from his position as adviser to the attorney general because he said the Gulf cartel’s political pull made the criminal group impossible to penetrate.

“I recognize that I am not capable of apprehending the public head of the Gulf cartel,” he said in his letter of resignation. “I did all I could with the instruments at my disposal. I failed.”

He has since linked the drug dealers to hard-liners in the PRI--a faction of the ruling party believed to have been the most threatened by Ruiz Massieu. Ruiz Massieu, the PRI secretary general, is said to have been a moderate reformer who served as a bridge between the Old Guard and the Young Turks advocating democratic reform.

Despite Valle’s frustration, Deputy Atty. Gen. Mario Ruiz Massieu--brother of the slain man--has made remarkable strides against the Gulf cartel. In the last four months, he and other authorities have arrested:

* Raul Valladares del Angel, accused of being a Garcia Abrego lieutenant.

* Carlos Resendez, who is believed to have led the cartel’s money-laundering operations. He was said to be its financial brain, as well as one of its top traffickers.

* Antonio Abrego, Garcia Abrego’s nephew; and Alejandro Diaz, who was caught in a police raid in Mexico City. Police said only that they were important members of the cartel and had been fugitives since 1988.

After those arrests, a month ago, Mario Ruiz Massieu vowed that “the arrest of Juan Garcia Abrego and the dismantling of his criminal organization is a fundamental task” for police.

The day before Francisco Ruiz Massieu was assassinated, federal police arrested four suspected members of the Gulf cartel and took from them cocaine with an estimated value of $100,000. Between them, the Ruiz Massieu brothers thus managed to irritate both the drug traffickers and politicians that Valle accuses of having formed an alliance with the traffickers, analysts note.