Mexico Is Edgy as It Awaits U.S. Decision on Progress in Drug War

By MARK FINEMAN

March 1, 1996 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

MEXICO CITY —

In the week leading up to the deadline today for the Clinton administration to certify the progress of key nations in the global war on drugs, Mexico’s stock market plunged, its frustration soared and its rhetoric seethed with nationalist pique.

“The Mexican government does not recognize any legitimacy to the ‘process of certification,’ ” declared Jorge Pinto, Mexico’s consul general in New York.

And Mexican Health Secretary Dr. Juan Ramon de la Fuente Ramirez delivered a scathing speech recalling the U.S. invasion of Mexico in 1846 and invoking the words of Mexico’s first indigenous president, Benito Juarez: “We do not need a foreigner to establish reforms for our country.”

He cited recent academic studies in Mexico and the U.S. to bolster Mexico’s decade-old position that the world’s largest drug-consuming nation has no right to pass judgment on its suppliers:

* For each Mexican who has used illegal drugs, there are nine Americans who have used them.

* Nearly 24 million Americans used illegal drugs last year, compared with 320,000 Mexicans.

* And one of every five Mexican students who admitted to using cocaine or heroin in a 1993 national survey said they first tried it in the United States.

Behind the numbers and the rhetoric is a real concern here that President Clinton, responding to election-year Republican pressure, could stop short today of fully certifying Mexico, a nation where the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration estimates powerful smuggling cartels are supplying up to three-fourths of the South American cocaine sold in the United States each year.

Decertification would mean suspension of U.S. foreign aid to Mexico and a U.S. vote against all World Bank and International Monetary Fund loans to this already cash-strapped nation. It also would jeopardize billions of dollars in remaining credit in Clinton’s $20-billion loan package for Mexico.

In Washington, U.S. officials said there is little chance that Clinton will decertify Mexico; most said Mexico is too important to risk such a step.

Nevertheless, they added, some U.S. drug enforcement officials would like to give the Mexicans a wake-up call. Among Clinton’s options is giving Mexico a “national-interest waiver,” which was applied last year to Colombia. A waiver would mean that the country’s antinarcotics efforts are too poor to certify but that U.S. national interest compels Washington to waive the penalties.

“We use it sometimes sort of as a yellow light to a country to indicate, ‘You did not do well, but you didn’t do badly enough to be purely decertified. And if you don’t shape up, that might be the next step,’ ” said a senior State Department official.

Mexican officials visited Washington last month to warn that a waiver--which would have no impact on foreign aid to Mexico--would be regarded as a gross insult and would affect all levels of U.S.-Mexican relations.

President Ernesto Zedillo has labeled narcotics trafficking “the No. 1 threat to Mexico’s national security.” He has declared war on the drug cartels and ordered their leaders rounded up, along with the police, prosecutors and politicians on their payrolls.

Unlike his counterpart in Colombia, where recent disclosures concerning President Ernesto Samper’s campaign contributions from the Cali cocaine cartel could well result in decertification today, Mexico’s president has never been linked to the cartels. And he has taken several bold steps to demonstrate his resolve against them.

In January, Zedillo ordered the expulsion to the U.S. of accused drug lord Juan Garcia Abrego, who was captured by Mexican drug agents 10 months after the FBI put him on its 10 Most Wanted list. The move was sharply criticized by Mexican jurists as potentially unconstitutional, although it was hailed by U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno as “a major victory” in Mexico’s war on drugs.

Moreover, DEA and FBI agents confirm Mexican assertions that counter-narcotics cooperation between the two nations reached an all-time high during the past year--a significant achievement in light of this nation’s traditional suspicion of its powerful northern neighbor.

Today’s decision also will affect U.S. domestic politics.

Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas, a Republican presidential aspirant, sent Clinton a letter last week demanding Mexico’s immediate decertification.

“If we are to be honest, we cannot credibly say that the government of Mexico has ‘cooperated fully’ with the drug enforcement effort,” Dole wrote.

Analysts in Mexico City partly blamed such broadsides for this week’s sharp losses on the Mexican stock market, which hit a one-year low Wednesday. And Mexico’s official response denouncing Dole’s assertions flagged what many U.S. counter-narcotics officials fear most: that a negative determination by the Clinton administration could sever the cooperation so necessary in the cross-border drug war.

Times staff writer Norman Kempster in Washington contributed to this report.

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Drug Seizures

Mexico says it is cooperating with efforts to fight drug use and trafficking. Between Jan. 1 and Dec. 25, 1995, the government seized:

* 500 tons of marijuana

* 12 tons of cocaine

* 200 kilograms of heroin

* 132 kilograms of opium paste

* 1.2 tons of ephedrine

* 0.5 ton of methamphetamines and hallucinogens

* 2.5 tons of peyote

* 1 ton of marijuana and poppy seeds