Pubdate: Thu, 02 Dec 1999 Source: Reuters Copyright: 1999 Reuters Limited. Author: Fiona Ortiz MEXICANS COMPLAIN OF U.S. MEDDLING IN GRAVE HUNT MEXICO CITY - The participation of U.S. FBI agents in the search for victims of the Juarez drug cartel is a violation of Mexico's sovereignty and a blow to the nation's pride, government critics charge. ``Under the argument of fighting drugs, we are being colonized by the United States,'' independent senator Adolfo Aguilar Zinser told Congress Wednesday. He said U.S. meddling in the operation had threatened Mexican sovereignty. In response, Eduardo Ibarrola, Deputy Attorney General for international law told Mexico's Televisa network cross-border cooperation was the best response to multinational criminals. ``Crime has globalized,'' Ibarrola said. ``It doesn't respect national frontiers and we have to confront it with all resources available.'' A team of 65 FBI investigators, working with Mexican authorities, unearthed six bodies this week in a mass grave in northern Mexico on a ranch near border city Ciudad Juarez. The binational teams expect to find more bodies in their search of four different sites where the infamous Juarez cocaine-running cartel may have executed and buried people. No one knows how many bodies may be dug out, but missing persons groups in Juarez say drug violence has resulted in the disappearance of almost 200 people in recent years. Wednesday, senators including Zinser took advantage of a congressional appearance by Foreign Minister Rosario Green to blast her with criticism of the FBI presence. But Green and Ibarrola said binational agreements, some of them approved by Mexico's Senate, allow joint U.S. and Mexican efforts to combat drugs and crime. U.S. Ambassador Jeffrey Davidow told reporters the U.S. was not pressuring Mexico and was only trying to help. U.S. presence on Mexican soil is a highly sensitive issue in proud Mexico, which shares a 2,100-mile (3,000-km) frontier with its powerful neighbor to the north. Mexicans harbor long-standing resentment stemming from the Mexican War 150 years ago, when the United States snatched nearly half of Mexico's territory. Mexico has also traditionally followed an independent foreign policy, and remains the only Latin American nation that hasn't followed the U.S. in cutting ties to Cuba. Respected constitutional law expert Ignacio Burgoa told Televisa ``no foreign authority or investigative police force ... can exercise functions inside national territory, because that would mean a violation of national sovereignty.'' Ibarrola responded that as long as U.S. officials were not exercising jurisdiction, making arrests or searches on their own authority, but just giving technical aid, they were operating ''within the framework of international treaties.'' U.S. officials have long complained that Mexican authorities are incapable of fighting powerful drug gangs who traditionally bribe police, prosecutors, judges and high government officials to keep them at bay. For their part, Mexicans have long bristled at the presence on their soil of underground agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Wednesday, former DEA director Thomas Constantine told ABC television the lack of arrests of drug traffickers in Mexico shows the deep levels of corruption and suggests the cartels are more powerful than the government. In an annual ritual when the White House ``certifies'' foreign countries that have been helpful in the international fight against drugs, many U.S. lawmakers resist certifying Mexico because of official complicity in the drug trade. Officials were tipped off to the existence of possible mass graves near Juarez by a former Mexican policeman who moonlighted as a hitman for the Juarez cartel. He confessed to participating in some of the killings. Earlier this week, Enrique Cocina Martinez, federal special prosecutor in Mexico City, said local and state police and judicial officials in Juarez were not informed about the investigation earlier ``because some might be involved with the drug cartels, both state and local.'' - --- MAP posted-by: Derek Rea