Mexico’s New Mystery: Is Salinas in U.S. Exile? : Diplomacy: Ex-president’s trip surprises American officials. His aides won’t confirm alleged deal with Zedillo.

This nation was riveted Monday by the case of its missing former president, as the government of incumbent President Ernesto Zedillo maintained official silence on the subject and the White House said it was not informed until after the fact that Carlos Salinas de Gortari had left Mexico reportedly for self-styled exile in the United States.

Salinas’ office in Mexico City issued only a brief statement confirming that the 46-year-old former Mexican president had left here for New York over the weekend. But it said Salinas was there simply to fulfill international commitments.

The statement made no mention of exile nor of widespread reports, privately confirmed by several official sources, that his departure was the result of an agreement to end a public spat with Zedillo, his handpicked successor.

The historic falling out--which at one point included Salinas’ 44-hour on-again, off-again hunger strike in a lower-middle-class home his government financed in Monterrey--had been the first time since 1938, analysts said, that present and former Mexican presidents had challenged each other so publicly and harshly about how this nation is run.

Published reports continued to appear Monday asserting that Salinas left as part of an agreement to fade into an academic career in Boston, where he earned two doctorate degrees from Harvard University.

The process, though officially unconfirmed by Zedillo’s office, recalled former President Lazaro Cardenas’ far more dramatic, formal exile of predecessor Plutarco Ilias Calles almost six decades ago.

White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said Mexican officials did not inform the U.S. Embassy and the Clinton Administration that Salinas--a close, respected friend of senior U.S. officials and an ally of Presidents Bush and Clinton--had moved to the United States until midday Monday. “It might have been after the fact,” he said dryly.

Administration officials were privately embarrassed and irritated that Salinas entered the country without any warning to the U.S. government.

Salinas entered the United States at Brownsville, Tex., on Friday aboard a private airplane, another official said. FAA records show the plane was cleared to continue its flight to New York, he said.

The official said the Mexican government had no legal obligation to inform the United States of Salinas’ entry but noted that it would have been a courtesy. “After all, we just put together billions of dollars to rescue their economy,” he said.

Instead, White House and State Department officials spent two days scrambling to find Salinas--and for most of that period had to tell their superiors that they didn’t know where he was.

One official said Salinas was believed to be in New York on Monday, attending a meeting of the board of directors of Dow Jones & Co., publishers of the Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones spokesmen were not available to confirm the report.

Meanwhile, in Mexico City, the government continued to expand its efforts to solve two high-profile assassinations--one of which led directly to Salinas’ falling out with Zedillo.

That happened after Zedillo permitted the arrest of Salinas’ elder brother, Raul Salinas de Gortari, as an alleged mastermind of the Sept. 28 assassination of Francisco Ruiz Massieu, the No. 2 official in their ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

The attorney general’s office announced another arrest in its renewed investigation into the assassination a year ago of Luis Donaldo Colosio, a PRI presidential candidate. Federal agents took a second-ranking member of Colosio’s security team into custody on charges he had falsified statements to earlier investigative teams.

Alejandro Garcia Hinojosa--who was on the “Omega,” the second-level security team that has become the focus of a possible internal party conspiracy to kill Colosio--was detained in a maximum security prison near Mexico City.

Prosecutors indicated there probably will be more breaks in the case before the March 23 anniversary of Colosio’s slaying at a Tijuana campaign rally.

Fineman reported from Mexico City and McManus from Washington.