"Little or No Action Taken Against Major Drug Cartels"

March 7, 1997

The Senate is likely to vote in the near future on legislation that would overturn President Clinton's certification of February 28, 1997, that Mexico "cooperated fully" with U.S. efforts to combat international narcotics trafficking during 1996. The expected vote stems from a February 27 letter to the President from a bipartisan group of 39 Senators, in which they urged him to deny certification to Mexico in his statutorily-mandated annual report to Congress. The Senators cited the following facts to support their position:

Cartels: "There has been little or no effective action taken against the major [Mexico-based] drug cartels. . . . As DEA Administrator Thomas Constantine says, 'The Mexicans are now the single most powerful trafficking groups' -- worse than the Colombian cartels."

Money Laundering: Laws promised by the Mexican Congress "are incomplete and have not yet been properly implemented."

Law Enforcement: Cocaine seizures remain low, with tonnage seized in 1996 barely half of that in 1993. Drug-related arrests are less than half the 1992 figure.

Cooperation with U.S. Law Enforcement: U.S. drug agents report that "the situation on the border has never been worse. . . . Some U.S. agents believe that all their cooperative efforts are undone almost instantly by the corrupt Mexican agents with whom they work"

Extraditions: "Mexico also has made very little progress in the area of extraditions. In the past year, they have failed to capture and extradite a single high-ranking member of any of the major drug cartels."

Corruption: "Mexico's counternarcotics effort is plagued by corruption in the government and the national police." Mexico's top counternarcotics official, General Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, has been arrested for accepting bribes from a major drug cartel.

The Clinton Response: Business As Usual

The day after the Senators informed him of their concerns, President Clinton recertified Mexico as cooperating in international counternarcotics efforts. Despite the evidence presented to him in the Senators' letter -- as well as in his own report of February 28 -- he stated that Mexico, along with 22 other major drug-producing and drug-transit countries, was "fully" cooperating with the United States in efforts to curb international drug trafficking: "The Government of Mexico's (GOM) 1996 counter-drug effort produced encouraging results and notable progress in bilateral cooperation." The recertification maintains Mexico's eligibility for bilateral assistance from the United States as well as assistance from multinational institutions, such as the World Bank. (Six other countries were not certified: Afghanistan, Burma, Colombia, Iran, Nigeria, and Syria; in addition, three countries -- Belize, Lebanon, and Pakistan -- received certification notwithstanding their lack of cooperation based on "vital national interests of the United States.")

Three Resolutions Introduced

On March 3, three resolutions were introduced to decertify Mexico; if passed by both houses of Congress, each is subject to presidential veto. The chief sponsors are Senators Coverdell, Feinstein, and Helms. The resolutions are as follows:

S.J.Res. 19: This is a simple disapproval of President Clinton's certification; S.J.Res. 19 was read for the second time on March 4 and placed on the Calendar (No. 23). If S.J.Res. 19 were enacted, pursuant to section 490 of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (22 U.S.C. 2291j), the President would be obliged (1) to withhold fifty percent of United States bilateral assistance to Mexico and (2) to instruct the U.S. director of each multilateral development bank (e.g., the World Bank, the International Development Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, etc.) to vote against loans for Mexico. Of the two sanctions, the second regarding multilateral institutions is considered to have a more serious potential negative impact on Mexico.

S.J.Res. 20: This is identical to S.J.Res. 19, except that it has been referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations. Under the provisions of section 601(b) of the International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act of 1976, the resolution must be discharged at the end of 10 calendar days. After that time, a motion to proceed to the resolution is privileged, with one hour debate equally divided and no amendments in order.

S.J.Res. 21: This resolution is similar to the other two, except that it includes a waiver provision that would permit the President to continue both bilateral assistance and multilateral development assistance. The waiver would allow both forms of aid to continue during fiscal year 1997 upon the President's certification that the "vital national interests of the United States" require that the aid prohibition not apply to Mexico during this fiscal year.

Most observers believe that S.J.Res. 21, which includes a waiver provision, has the best chance of passage. In addition, on March 6 the House International Relations Committee, by a vote of 27 to 5, approved a similar decertification resolution (H.J.Res. 58), with a waiver provision; a vote in the full House is expected Wednesday, March 12. In any case, it is expected that any Mexico decertification resolution that may eventually be passed by the Congress will draw President Clinton's veto. Its passage, however, would be read as an important signal to both the Clinton Administration and Mexico that quick action on the items detailed in the Senators' letter of February 27 is essential.

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