U.S. to Review Drug-Ally Assessment

The Clinton administration plans to reevaluate the controversial annual process by which the U.S. certifies that Mexico and other drug-producing and -trafficking countries are working vigorously to fight the flow of illegal drugs into the United States.

The administration’s drug policy chief, Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, said during a weeklong tour of the U.S.-Mexico border that Washington officials will consider scrapping the arduous certification process if a new, more constructive system can be devised.

While Mexico has long objected to certification, the process has strong support in Congress, and any effort to change it will almost certainly meet tough opposition. Many lawmakers believe certification provides the only real measure of what a country does to fight drugs.

During a stop in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, on Tuesday, McCaffrey said, “The certification process is difficult, but it is a question of a law of the land.” He added, however, that “President Clinton has asked me to come up with a concept that perhaps will suggest a new modality of cooperation in the hemisphere.”

Speaking in San Diego on Thursday, he went further in outlining what his office will do in the weeks ahead. “We are working on what we can offer, not necessarily as a replacement for certification but what is a higher-order way of addressing the issue,” he said.

McCaffrey said he has been advised by at least one senator that certification is not seen solely as a tool to monitor Mexico but also as an effort to ensure that the White House is forcing Mexico to cooperate in the fight against drugs.

“The U.S. Congress wants strong oversight from the U.S. executive branch on the foreign drug-reduction effort,” he said. “And I’m sympathetic with that.”

He also indicated that a progress report he will submit soon to Congress will show that Mexico has made important strides in fighting drugs in the six months since the Clinton White House last granted Mexico certification.

There have been moves in Congress to do away with certification. In early May, the House International Relations Committee adopted an amendment to the foreign affairs authorization bill by Rep. Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.) that would have abolished certification and called on the president to order sanctions against any country that in his judgment failed to cooperate in the war on drugs. But the amendment was dropped on the House floor.

Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.) has introduced a separate bill that would create a commission to study the certification issue. But his bill is not expected to go far.

At one point, Clinton may have mistakenly believed that Kolbe’s bill had passed. Just before his visit to Mexico earlier this year, Clinton told Mexican journalists in Washington that “we now have a bipartisan review going on in Congress, which I have supported.” His aides acknowledged later, however, that they knew of no such review.

Any move by the Clinton administration to change the current process will not be easy. California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein has been particularly vocal in complaints that Mexico should be held more accountable. “We’re a border state,” she said Thursday, “and I’m one that believes that the only thing moving some of these countries in a positive direction is the threat of decertification.”

Aides in McCaffrey’s office said the discussions about redoing the certification process hopefully will hit a high point by November with decisions on what--if anything--to propose to the White House. But they caution that the tough part is not agreeing that the current system should be dropped; the difficult job is finding a replacement.

McCaffrey now is finishing a report for Congress on progress over the past six months by Mexican officials to combat the flow of drugs into the United States.

“Mexican armed forces have destroyed more drugs than any other institution on the face of the Earth, period,” he said. “. . . I believe they are doing a little bit better than we are on the southwest border on our side.”

In an unrelated development, aides traveling with McCaffrey revealed that he received a direct threat against his life Tuesday when an unidentified person in Mexico alerted the FBI that a northern Mexico drug cartel was planning to assassinate McCaffrey with a missile strike.

The aides said they were taking the threat very seriously, particularly in light of the general’s travels this week along the border. But McCaffrey did not seem bothered by the incident. “We think the security arrangements have been first rate,” he said.

Staff writers Stanley Meisler and Ronald J. Ostrow in Washington contributed to this report.