U.S.-MEXICO: U.S. Senate Averts Crisis As It Upholds Clinton Certification

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Mar 20 1997 (IPS) - A virtually unanimous U.S. Senate helped defuse growing tension with Mexico Thursday by deciding against challenging President Bill Clinton’s recent certification that Mexico is a full-fledged ally in the war against drugs.

Voting 94-5, the upper body approved a resolution which confines its criticism of Mexico to asserting that “there has been ineffective and insufficient progress in halting the production in and transit through Mexico of illegal drugs.”

The resolution, which effectively ends debate on the certification, requires Clinton to submit to Congress by Sep. 1 a report on “significant and demonstrable progress” made by the U.S. and Mexican governments on a range of initiatives to crack down on the drug trade both here and in Mexico.

That was a far cry from demands made by the House and even some of the same senators who sponsored Thursday’s resolution when Clinton announced his decision Feb. 28 to certify Mexico as cooperating fully with U.S. efforts to fight the drug trade.

Outraged by that decision in light of reports confirming that drug money had penetrated the highest levels of the Mexican government, many lawmakers initially backed legislation to repeal the certification.

But a strong lobbying campaign by the administration, coupled with threats by senior Mexican officials that bilateral relations could be badly set back if Congress overruled Clinton’s determination, persuaded virtually all of the senators to ease their anger.

“We don’t really have an alternative,” said Texas Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson who had originally supported de- certification. She said the resolution was designed to show — without doing “something destructive” –that “it is no longer business as usual in the drug war”.

After two weeks of negotiations, key senators from both parties and the administration reached agreement Wednesday on a resolution that both sides could live with.

The Senate acted just one week after the House voted 251-175 to give Mexico 90 days to take six specific steps against drug- trafficking or face decertification.

In addition to the stigma attached to such a determination, decertification requires the administration to cut off most kinds of aid, vote against loans by multilateral development banks to the country in question, and even reduce or eliminate its trade preferences. The president, however, has the power to waive any or all of these sanctions for reasons of national security as he has, for example, with Colombia.

To comply with the House’s ultimatum, Mexico would have been required to permit Washington to deploy more Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) officers to work in Mexico and let them carry sidearms and to make “substantial progress” in several other areas, including extraditing accused drug traffickers to the United States.

Several of the measures have been staunchly resisted by Mexican authorities who have warned that, if implemented, they are likely to trigger a nationalistic backlash against Washington with unpredictable consequences.

Clinton’s own drug czar, ret. Gen. Barry McCaffrey, warned lawmakers last week that the tensions building up over Congress’ denunciation of the Mexican record had become “extremely explosive.” He said opposition figures were attacking the government of President Ernesto Zedillo for “excessive deference of (Mexican sovereignty) to the United States.”

He also suggested Mexico might respond by actually reducing drug cooperation across the border.

At the same time, U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers warned that harsh action against Mexico could jeopardise the country’s fragile economic recovery by “undermining investor confidence …in the strength of our American commitment to work with Mexico to advance reform.”

Other voices also called for extreme caution. George Grayson, an influential Mexico expert at the College of William & Mary in Virginia, said de-certification would result in the “strengthening of the nationalist-leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party” in upcoming elections, especially in the mayor’s race in Mexico City.

These arguments eventually won the day in the Senate where many members expressed as much frustration with the certification process, enacted by Congress 11 years ago, as with the alleged failure of Mexican officials to prosecute the drug war.

“If (the certification process) is not working, what good is it?” asked Senator Christopher Dodd, the Democrats’ top spokesman on Latin America policy.

But Democratic Senator John Kerrey defended the process, noting that “Were it not for certification, we wouldn’t be here fighting (about this) today.” Senate action of some kind, he argued, was required, given the sorry state of U.S.-Mexican drug cooperation.

“Our DEA says there isn’t one law enforcement entity in Mexico that they can fully rely on,” said Kerrey.

The controversy over certification began building early last month when it was disclosed that Mexico’s own drug czar, Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, had been dismissed and arrested for collaborating with one of Mexico’s top drug lords. In subsequent days, other reports were published here citing evidence that at least two of Mexico’s most powerful state governors were also on the take.

The news from Mexico has hardly improved in recent days. Earlier this week, the arrest of a Mexican Army brigadier general on drug-related charges offered “new proof that traffickers have corrupted high levels of Mexico’s military,” according to the New York Times. The Times reported Thursday that Washington had strongly protested Mexico’s alleged failure to seize more than 160 million dollars deposited in Mexican banks by an alleged smuggler.

But these reports have failed to move senators who are clearly persuaded that decertification is a risky move which could have unintended consequences.

Indeed, much of the nine-page resolution focuses on U.S. responsibility for the drug-trafficking problem, noting, for example, that “major criminal organisations” operate “on both sides of the border”, and that “some law enforcement officials may also be affected by (drug-related) corruption.”

The criteria by which Clinton is required to report progress by Sep. 1 avoids the very specific demands made by the House. Instead, it uses very general language in marking progress on cooperation on a range of issues, from “strengthening” law enforcement cooperation to implementing laws against money- laundering.