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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Mexico Expresses Relief As Colombia Outraged

Mark Fineman Los Angeles Times

The Clinton administration’s Friday ruling on which nations are cooperating with the United States in the war on drugs met with righteous relief in Mexico and resigned resentment in Colombia, even as the two nations that supply up to 75 percent of the cocaine and much of the marijuana consumed in America struggled to intensify their anti-narcotics battles.

President Ernesto Zedillo’s office reacted to President Clinton’s action by issuing a five-page statement emphasizing that Mexico will keep cracking down on its rich, powerful drug cartels because it is the right thing to do for Mexico - and not because of American pressure.

“The Mexican government is firmly committed to the battle against drug trafficking … the most serious threat to (Mexico’s) national security, public health and peace of society,” the statement declared.

Most analysts here agreed Friday that U.S. officials would have faced dire consequences had they chosen to deny Mexico its drug-fighting certification.

“It would have been demoralizing for counter-narcotics operations,” said Celia Toro, a Colegio de Mexico professor who specializes in analyzing the drug trade. “It would have created an even more negative climate in all the police forces and in the attorney general’s office.”

Still, other analysts noted that Mexican law enforcement efforts to combat drugs remain in shambles, its intelligence compromised and concerns about its integrity in doubt after the recent arrest on drug charges of Jose de Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, the onetime army general who briefly led Mexico’s version of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.

Deeply wounded by last week’s arrest of the anti-drug czar, Mexican officials - in the 11th hour before their American evaluation - announced the capture of a fugitive they called a leader of a major drug cartel. At midnight Thursday, Mexico’s attorney general’s office announced that Oscar Malherbe, reputedly a major cocaine trafficker who has been wanted on U.S. drug conspiracy charges for more than seven years, had been nabbed.

By Friday, the attorney general was conceding that Malherbe actually had been arrested two days earlier in a shopping center in the capital.

Meantime, in Colombia, where investigators say farmers grow most of the cocaine that then is smuggled through Mexico into the United States, officials were stunned by Clinton’s decision to deny their nation an anti-narcotics certification for a second straight year.

“The government considers the decertification applied to our country demoralizing and unjust,” President Ernesto Samper said.

Colombia’s anti-drug czar called the decision “totally unjust.” He argued that Washington had ignored tough narcotics-fighting measures that the Bogota government put in force last year, as well as Colombians’ efforts to imprison drug cartel chiefs.

The adverse decision affecting Colombia actually was expected to have little real effect because Washington again stopped short of imposing potential penalties, such as economic sanctions that could force legitimate Colombian exporters to pay higher tariffs when they sell products in the United States.

Still, Colombia’s outraged Labor Minister Orlando Obregon Sabogal echoed the sentiments of many Latin American nations, saying the 11-yearold American certification process is hypocritical and a violation of nations’ sovereignty.

“The marijuana smoke (in the White House) doesn’t allow them to see Colombia’s reality clearly,” he said.