Mexico Seeks IMF Loan of $7.6 Billion : Finance: Agency’s willingness to put up such resources is expected to ease opposition to U.S. credit package.

President Ernesto Zedillo’s government moved Thursday to secure a $7.6-billion loan from the International Monetary Fund to help defuse the nation’s economic crisis, avert the immediate need for a controversial U.S. credit package and blunt criticism at home that the government is mortgaging Mexico’s sovereignty.

IMF Managing Director Michel Camdessus said he expects the Washington-based lending agency to approve the loan--its largest ever--next week. Zedillo’s finance secretary, Guillermo Ortiz, had announced in Mexico City that he is seeking the 18-month revolving credit to stabilize the nation’s currency, which has lost 44% of its value in a month, and hold down prices as Mexico’s interest rates are peaking at 30%.

“The IMF’s Executive Board has followed the Mexican situation very closely, and I am confident that it will approve Mexico’s request,” Camdessus said in Washington, calling the loan “a strong signal that the international community is fully behind this program for restoring health to the Mexican economy.”

The willingness of a major international organization to put such resources on the line is expected to ease some of the opposition in the U.S. Congress to the $40-billion credit package proposed by the Clinton Administration to back up Mexico’s private borrowing--and denounced by Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.) on Thursday as a “billionaires’ bailout.”

Most Mexican analysts viewed Zedillo’s decision to seek IMF financing as a partial alternative to that package if it fails to pass, and as an urgently needed addition to the U.S. loan guarantees even if they do pass. Ortiz stressed in releasing the text of Mexico’s IMF application that the nation is deserving of the loan, which he conceded represents 300% of Mexico’s quota with the international lending body.

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But Ortiz and Mexican Central Bank Gov. Miguel Mancera stressed that the government is studying alternatives to the U.S. package, and Zedillo’s top economic adviser flatly asserted that Mexico is prepared to reject it if Congress ties the credit to unacceptable conditions.

The IMF package appeared to have an immediate affect on the Mexican peso, which closed at 5.55 to the U.S. dollar, up from 5.71 at the opening of trading Thursday. But the Mexican stock exchange continued to fall, closing down 1.85%. And analysts said Ortiz’s announcement was not likely to temper increasingly sharp populist reaction here to the lack of wide U.S. support for the loan guarantees.

The announcement came as congressional opposition to the Clinton proposal spread confusion, anger and anti-Americanism in Mexico this week. As U.S. lawmakers continued to debate the long-term future of Mexico’s economy, Zedillo is facing a backlash of his own.

“The U.S. is just trying to buy Mexico,” said a taxi driver in Mexico City. “They want our land. They want our resources. The only thing they don’t want is our people.”

A cartoon in the Mexico City newspaper La Jornada on Tuesday depicted a safe containing $40 billion hurtling toward a tiny Mexican peasant with outstretched arms, below the words, “We’re Saved!”

Foreign Secretary Jose Angel Gurria, who was grilled for several hours in the Mexican Congress on Wednesday even as debate raged on Capitol Hill, also struck a cynical tone.

“I would say that the most typical profile of an American politician is a person who does not necessarily have a high awareness of international issues,” Gurria told Mexico’s Foreign Relations Commission, which called the session to hear the government’s explanation of the credit plan and of U.S. opposition to it. “Assuming all American legislators know where Mexico is on the map, it is legitimate for them to ask, ‘On whose account will this go, and why?’ ”

And Tuesday, tens of thousands of people marched through downtown Mexico City in a protest that cut across party lines. Surrounded by banners and placards accusing the United States of usurping Mexican sovereignty, Mexican opposition leader Cuauhtemoc Cardenas called for a Feb. 12 referendum to test public support for the credit package and the Mexican government’s emergency economic plan.

Opinion polls show that most Americans oppose it.

Almost immediately after the protest, Zedillo gave a nationally televised speech, issuing a five-point promise “in defense of sovereignty.”

Zedillo vowed that his government will not accept credit conditions that work against Mexico’s legitimate interests. Under no circumstances, he said, will his government privatize the national oil company, Petroleos Mexicanos, a symbol of Mexican independence and pride. He also said his government will not renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement.

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“No compromise will be accepted that makes our national sovereignty vulnerable or goes against the interests of Mexicans,” Zedillo declared.

And on Thursday he appealed for calm, stressing in a speech to Mexican business leaders that his overall recovery plan, which includes the U.S. loan guarantees, was “designed by Mexicans and for Mexicans and will be implemented by and for Mexicans.”

In Washington on Thursday, President Clinton reiterated his message that failure to approve the U.S. loan guarantee program would have “grave consequences for Mexico, for Latin America, for the entire developing world.”

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“More important,” Clinton said, “our approach will safeguard hundreds of thousands of Americans whose livelihoods are now tied to Mexico’s well-being.”

But Mexican irritation was reignited Thursday on news of U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher’s congressional testimony that Mexico had agreed in a letter of intent to a bilateral plan to intensify policing against illegal immigration and narcotics trafficking.

In a clear move to garner support for the loan guarantees, Christopher linked the agreement to the credit package. But he revealed it before Zedillo’s government had disclosed it, and his announcement had the opposite impact south of the border, where analysts suggested that the United States now was dictating policy to Mexico in exchange for loan guarantees.

Mexico’s Foreign Secretariat issued a communique Thursday morning neither confirming nor denying the existence of the letter of intent, stating only that the two governments have been “working intensively” since Zedillo took office Dec. 1 to expand cooperative law enforcement.

Times staff writer James Gerstenzang in Washington contributed to this report.