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Salinas Said to Have Left Mexico for Exile in U.S.

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

Former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari apparently left Mexico for an extended stay in the United States, amid widespread reports Sunday that his departure was part of an “exile of convenience” to defuse a confrontation between the Harvard-educated economic reformer and his handpicked successor.

As President Ernesto Zedillo late Sunday night blamed the “imbalances” of previous years for the economic crisis that forced his government to impose an emergency plan that will make every Mexican poorer overnight starting April 1, published reports and official sources confirmed that Salinas agreed to fade into an academic career in the United States to end Mexico’s most bitter and public presidential tiff in six decades.

Zedillo did not mention his predecessor by name in his first appeal for popular support for harsh measures to defuse a crisis most Mexicans blame on Salinas. But numerous sources said the president’s address came after the former president already had departed with his wife and three children for New York, en route to Boston.

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In one report that a Mexican official described as “highly credible,” the muckraking weekly Proceso reported Sunday that Salinas and Zedillo agreed during a face-to-face meeting at the official presidential residence of Los Pinos on Thursday evening that the former president would engage in no political activity and spend the duration of Zedillo’s six-year term out of the country.

The reported agreement came after a public spat that began when Zedillo’s government jailed Salinas’ elder brother on charges of masterminding the murder of the ruling party’s No. 2 official last year and ended with Salinas’ on-again, off-again hunger strike--a 44-hour drama that riveted the attention of the nation but lowered public opinion of Salinas still further.

The usually reliable Mexico City daily La Jornada reported Sunday that the former president boarded a plane Saturday night with his ultimate destination as Boston. Salinas earned two doctorate degrees from Harvard University in nearby Cambridge.

Salinas could not be reached for comment Sunday, and a spokesman for Zedillo said he could not confirm or deny the report. But a source close to Salinas said he and his family appeared to have left the country for the United States.

In Washington, a State Department official maintained Sunday afternoon that the U.S. government did not know for sure whether Salinas is in the United States. “He is a private citizen,” the official said. “We are unaware of any impediments to Salinas traveling to the United States.”

Although Zedillo never mentioned Salinas by name during his Sunday night address on national radio and television, the president spoke to the heart of the issue behind his break with his former mentor--who, in keeping with 66 years of Institutional Revolutionary Party tradition, picked Zedillo, a Yale-educated economist, to replace him after the party’s first presidential candidate, Luis Donaldo Colosio, was assassinated at a Tijuana campaign rally a year ago.

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In his strongest comments yet, Zedillo reinforced his commitment to a new policy to hold accountable a political system that has ruled with absolute impunity for decades--even if it means arresting the brother of a former president.

“The law obligates everyone equally, and nobody--absolutely nobody--can be above it,” Zedillo declared.

“Cases of impunity--resulting from the abuse of power, the evil use of authority and corruption--have injured the nation badly,” he said. “It is our obligation to apply the law without exceptions.

“Nothing and no one will weaken my decision to lead the construction of an authentic rule of law that all Mexicans deserve. . . . We want a new democracy and a clean political life.”

Despite the gravity of the charges against Salinas’ elder brother, Raul, Zedillo’s speech mentioned neither Raul nor Carlos Salinas, who has not been implicated in any way in the Sept. 28 gangland-style slaying of Francisco Ruiz Massieu, whose own brother is in federal detention in New York and is awaiting possible extradition on charges of covering up Raul Salinas’ alleged role in the murder.

Instead, Zedillo focused his address almost entirely on the economic sacrifices he is asking of all Mexicans.

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Conceding that his government had underestimated the gravity of Mexico’s economic crisis at first, Zedillo told the nation that, without the bitter measures he applied last week, the nation’s economy would have collapsed.

“If we did not arrest and reverse the uncontrolled deterioration of the most recent weeks, we would have risked suffering a financial collapse that would have paralyzed sources of employment and delivery of services,” the president said. He said such a collapse would have cost millions of jobs and “eliminated the prospects of an entire generation of Mexicans.”

Other options to solve a crisis that has devalued Mexico’s peso by more than 40% in two months, sent interest rates soaring and drained the nation’s foreign exchange reserves and financial markets of billions in investment “in reality would bring us very quickly into much graver unemployment and inflation,” he said.

“The program announced by the government is, despite the effort it demands, the shortest road with the least sacrifices to overcome the crisis. . . . Certainly, the effort required is very intense, but it is also certain to be temporary.” He added that the government will also make sacrifices, with “austerity in all of government” except social security and subsidies for such basics as tortillas, milk and bread.

Ultimately, he said, the economic restructuring will save thousands of small and medium businesses.

“The next months will be the most difficult,” he conceded, but he predicted that gradually the peso will rebound, interest rates will fall and confidence will be restored in Mexico’s economy.

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But Zedillo’s economic pitch was probably falling on unsympathetic ears, according to polls and political analysts. Together, they indicated Sunday that Zedillo faces a solid wall of opposition and many dangers in implementing the plan.

A poll by Mexico City’s Reforma newspaper indicated Sunday that 72% of Mexicans believe workers, peasants and lower classes will make the greatest sacrifices under Zedillo’s emergency plan, while only 2% said his government will sacrifice more.

Three-fourths said their sacrifices will be great, and predictably, a full 97% said they oppose the government’s price increases of 35% for gasoline and 20% for electricity as well as a 50% increase in the sales tax. Nearly two-thirds said they were against Zedillo’s management of the economy.

As opposition to the measures continued to mount in the Congress, where all pro-labor legislators now indicate they will challenge the plan when the session resumes here Wednesday, prominent historian Enrique Krauze warned that the bitter economic medicine comes against the backdrop of a nation undergoing a political transition not unlike glasnost in the former Soviet Union.

“What is occurring now through the pressure of Mexican society has been the creation of our own version of glasnost, “ he said in an essay published here Sunday. “The risks are enormous and are on everyone’s lips: a possible rebellion by the labor mafias, the bureaucrats, the state ruling party chapters; increasing narco-politics; more assassinations, and an improbable--but not impossible--military coup.”

Times staff writer Jim Mann in Washington contributed to this report.

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