Source: Orange County Register (CA) Contact: http://www.ocregister.com/ Pubdate: Wed, 8 Apr 1998 Author: Mark Stevenson - Associated Press NEW STANDARDS SET FOR MEXICO'S ANTI-DRUG EFFORT The 'concrete measurements' are designed to mollify Latin nations that complained of U.S. political posturing. Mexico City - Moving to ease a sore point in U.S.-Mexican relations, President Clinton's top drug adviser Tuesday announced a new way to evaluate Mexico's anti-drug effort - a method aimed at making the nations equal partners in the drug war. After meeting with top Mexican officials, Gen. Barry McCaffrey said "concrete measurements" would be used to evaluate the anti-drug seizures and arrests. The procedure is supposed to reduce the political posturing in the congressional certification process, which has been roundly criticized by Mexico and several other Latin nations. "We do believe, is supposed to reduce the political posturing in the congressional certification process, which has been roundly criticized by Mexico and several other Latin nations. "We do believe, many of us, that the evidence (of the measurement program)...over time will make irrelevant the I.S. process of certification," said McCaffrey, who was in Mexico to coordinate anti-drug strategy. The U.S. government currently certifies every six months whether key nations are cooperating in the fight against drugs. Those not certified face economic and other sanctions. The process infuriates officials in Mexico and other countries, who charge that the United States creates most of the drug problem because of its vast market for illegal narcotics. The new evaluation system would make Mexico and the United States more equal partners in the fight against drugs because both sides will be obliged to report on progress. While U.S. politicians have long called on Mexican authorities to do more to catch drug traffickers, the tables were turned Tuesday when Mexico's attorney general said U.S. police should be doing more to capture the Arellano Felix brothers, who head a Tijuana-based cocaine cartel believed to be Mexico's largest. Attorney General Jorge Madrazo said at the news conference that concluded the two-day meeting that the brothers probably are hiding in San Diego. "We are perhaps not very satisfied with the United States' efforts, or they are not very satisfied with our efforts, because at this time we do not physically have the three Arellano Felix brothers in prison," Madrazo said. Benjamin, Ramon and Francisco Arellano Felix are believed to be the biggest suppliers of cocaine to the United States. Mexico has offered a $1 million reward for each. Ramon Arellano Felix is on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List, and federal authorities have offered a $2 million reward for information leading to his arrest. McCaffrey referred questions on the druglords' whereabouts to U.S. law-enforcement agencies such as the DEA and FBI. Madrazo also denied that U.S. drug agents had received tacit authorization to carry guns in Mexico. That was a sensitive issue before Clinton's visit to Mexico in May 1997, when both nations said they had taken unspecified steps to protect such agents. That announcement was widely interpreted at the time as implying that the DEA agents were given unstated approval to carry weapons on Mexican soil, an interpretation Madrazo denied Tuesday. "The means of protecting those agents is not by giving them arms," Madrazo said. U.S. officials are concerned that their agents could meet a fate like that of DEA agent Enrique Camarena, who was kidnapped Feb. 7, 1985, in Guadalajara, Mexico, and taken to a druglord's home where he was tortured and killed.