U.S., Mexico Unveil ‘Guide to Action’ for War on Drugs

The United States and Mexico on Friday released a joint strategy for carrying out their war on drugs, offering what President Clinton termed “the concrete actions our two governments will take” in the battle.

The 39-page document, released nine months after it was promised by Clinton and Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo at a summit in Mexico City, contained more rhetoric than specific steps, and Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, the White House anti-narcotics czar, was more cautious than the president in describing its contents.

McCaffrey called it “a conceptual outline and guide to action.”

Still, the document represented a strong affirmation of cooperation between the two countries in battling narcotics. As such, it should boost Mexico’s case as the Clinton administration considers soon whether its southern neighbor should be certified as fully cooperating with the war on drugs.

Under U.S. law, the administration must formally declare before March every year whether countries that serve as production or transport sites for narcotics are doing their part to stem the flow of drugs. If denied certification, the countries face a cut in foreign assistance and other sanctions.

Last year, several members of Congress, belittling Mexico’s record in the war on drugs, assailed the administration for certifying the Mexicans year after year. They launched an effort to overturn certification, but heavy lobbying by the administration derailed that effort.

In last year’s debate, administration officials pledged that the two countries would demonstrate heightened cooperation in the drug war. But the joint strategy document released Friday may not prove enough to avoid another bruising battle in Congress over certification.

The document is designed to set down steps to fulfill goals such as: combating criminal organizations tied to drugs, rooting out the corruption linked with the drug trade and diminishing the narcotics-related border violence.

To fight organized crime, the two governments promised to: strengthen their investigative and prosecution teams, screen ethical conduct of investigators and prosecutors, convict crime leaders and mete out tough sentences, and exchange information in the pursuit of such criminals.

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The governments pledged to develop programs to detect corruption among officials who are supposedly hunting down drug criminals, punish the guilty and exchange information about efforts to root out the problem.

The document also calls for both governments to increase cooperation between police on both sides of the border, set up new systems of immediate communication between border posts and assist each other in identifying the kind of vehicles and tactics used in drug traffic.

McCaffrey said the next step for the U.S.-Mexico High Level Contact Group, which worked out the strategy, was to “define measures of effectiveness.”

The report was released as the first salvos were fired in the Mexico drug certification battle.

Rep. John L. Mica (R-Fla.), a persistent critic of Mexico, told a meeting of diplomats, drug policy specialists and journalists a few hours earlier that Mexico should not have been certified last year.

Without citing any specific examples, he accused Mexico of “subverting” the certification process through its lobbying on Capitol Hill.

In Mexico City, where the drug strategy report was released by Atty. Gen. Jorge Madrazo Cuellar and Foreign Minister Rosario Green, the Mexican officials insisted that they were not trying to win certification from the United States.

“Certification is a unilateral law, a U.S. law,” Green said. “We don’t discuss U.S. laws, just as we don’t want the Americans to discuss our laws.”

The new strategy was overshadowed at the Mexico City news conference by a controversy over a report in the Washington Times linking Interior Minister Francisco Labastida to drug traffickers when he served as governor of the state of Sinaloa from 1987 to 1992.

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The Washington Times said in its article Thursday that those allegations were contained in a CIA document.

Mexico has reacted furiously, sending a note to the State Department demanding that it confirm whether such a document exists.

Green suggested that the article had been planted by someone opposed to the joint U.S.-Mexican efforts. “If someone wants to block the cooperation and progress that have allowed us to fight together against drug trafficking and related crimes, they are not going to achieve this,” he said.

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Meisler reported from Washington and Sheridan from Mexico City.