Perry Visit Opens Ties With Mexico’s Isolationist Military : Latin America: U.S. sees ‘new era of friendship’ that could help combat flow of illegal drugs.

U.S. Defense Secretary William J. Perry ended an official visit to Mexico on Tuesday, declaring that the two nations have begun a new strategic relationship likely to produce increased military cooperation in combatting the multibillion-dollar cross-border narcotics trade, illegal immigration and the effects of natural disasters.

In speeches and informal discussions during the two-day visit, Perry and his aides described “a new era of friendship” between Mexico’s traditionally nationalist and isolationist armed forces and their powerful neighbor to the north. They cast it as a natural evolution--the next step after the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993 and the White House summit earlier this month, in which President Clinton and President Ernesto Zedillo cemented closer economic and political ties.

At the end of the first official trip by a U.S. defense secretary to Mexico, which included a private breakfast Tuesday between Perry and Zedillo, many U.S. and Mexican analysts said the emerging strategic ties between two militaries long suspicious of each other border on the revolutionary.

At a cocktail party at the U.S. ambassador’s residence Monday night, for example, uniformed Mexican generals--including Gen. Enrique Cervantes, the national defense minister--hobnobbed with their U.S. counterparts during one of the first such joint social engagements ever held. Several guests called the event “historic.”

“The ideas and proposals being discussed today in our hemisphere would have been unthinkable even 10 years ago,” Perry declared, using the party to toast “a new U.S.-Mexican security relationship based on openness, trust and cooperation.”

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Perry said his meetings with Cervantes and other Mexican military leaders “set the stage for our nations to do more in the security area, and at both higher and deeper levels: more defense and military contacts and dialogue; more officer exchanges; more cooperation on disaster relief, and more openness and sharing of information, such as in the areas of our counternarcotics and border operations.”

During a speech to 100 Mexican military officers here on Monday, the secretary indicated that the bilateral relationship may well include more aggressive joint counternarcotics operations and the supply of sophisticated U.S. military hardware to Mexico for its battle against the drug cartels. Mexico has requested from the Pentagon a $70-million package of high-technology military equipment, including advanced satellite radar systems capable of tracking aircraft smuggling South American cocaine through Mexico into the United States.

“Looking beyond our counternarcotics work, we have opportunities for cooperation in equipment modernization,” Perry said. “Some programs already have begun, but we must jointly examine new areas where we can work together.”

Throughout that speech--and his entire visit--Perry emphasized the sovereignty and independence of Mexico and its armed forces.

Speaking to reporters as he left Zedillo’s residence for the airport on Tuesday, Perry said Mexico’s military command is open to cooperating with the United States in five specific areas, among them “assisting in the information we gather from monitoring airplanes and ships.” Already, he said, the United States has leased to the Mexican attorney general’s office 12 military helicopters for counternarcotics surveillance. “We’re discussing radars also--the possibility of providing radars or assistance . . . so they can do monitoring of the air traffic better,” he said.

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Perry’s visit came just two days after Mexico’s attorney general submitted legislation to the nation’s Congress that would create new, elite military units empowered to do what police and judicial corruption apparently have prevented civilian institutions from doing--combat effectively the powerful drug cartels that are funneling tons of Colombian cocaine through Mexico and across the U.S. border.

Already, Atty. Gen. Antonio Lozano has used the army in major drug arrests. The most dramatic was in June, when 200 soldiers surrounded the house of a deputy federal police commander who was protecting a major drug cartel chief.

Analysts and Mexican officials privately worry that placing Mexico’s military at the front line against the cartels could corrupt the armed forces--one of the last federal institutions that retains popular respect in a nation torn by economic and political crisis.

“That is very much a concern, especially among our own military leaders,” said one Mexican official, who asked not to be named. “But they are very conscious of the threat of corruption. The key will be to make sure the army’s role is not a permanent one, and to keep a safe distance between the army and the cartels--operating radars or flying helicopter patrols, for example.”