Mexico, U.S. Meet To Tackle Drugs, Immigration Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit Mexico, U.S. Meet To Tackle Drugs, Immigration 12:20 a.m. Jun 04, 1999 East By Dan Trotta MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico and the United States Thursday began annual cabinet-level talks on bilateral relations that were overshadowed by charges of high-level Mexican drug links but also keen to make progress on the thorny issue of immigration. The Binational Commission, which has met every year since 1981, was due to have been attended by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright but she canceled upon reports that Yugoslavia had accepted a peace deal for Kosovo. In her place, White House anti-drug czar Barry McCaffrey and Attorney General Janet Reno were due to lead the U.S. side in the annual review of bilateral relations that will run through Friday with 16 separate working groups on various aspects of the subject. The meeting seeks to improve the complex relationship between the two neighbors, whose trade across their 2,000-mileborder totals nearly $200 billion a year. U.S. secretaries of commerce, interior (environment), transportation, agriculture and housing and urban development were due in Mexico to meet with their counterparts. As for immigration, Mexico has expressed concern at the 300 illegal immigrants who died in 1998 trying to cross the U.S. border in remote areas. But issues such as trade and immigration were knocked off center stage by reports this week in the New York Times and the Washington Post, respectively, that Mexican presidential advisor Jose Liebano Saenz and the politically powerful Hank family were under U.S. drug investigations. McGuffey blasted the leaks by U.S. authorities to the media as ``outrageous'' and ``unprofessional'' and said he knew of no intelligence reports linking either Liebano Saenz or the Hank family to drug trafficking or money laundering. ``Will we allow mischief makers ... to hamper the development of practical cooperation between the two countries? I doubt it,'' McCaffrey told foreign correspondents, referring to the leaks. ``I bet we are able to continue moving ahead.'' McCaffrey recognized there were high levels of corruption in the Mexican government, recalling how he was personally dismayed that his former Mexican counterpart, Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebello, was arrested two years ago for being on the payroll of a top Mexican drug lord. But he also credited Mexico with making great progress. ``They're in the midst of a 15-year revolution: economic, political, law enforcement,'' he said. ``There are huge amounts of change going on down here.'' McCaffrey also tried to point blame at the United States, where he said 1.5 million people were arrested for drug-related crimes last year and 14,000 people died of drug abuse. ``There is no lack of violent, dangerous criminals in both of these nations,'' he told a press conference upon arriving. Officials say up to two thirds of the cocaine consumed on American streets passes through Mexico, where poorly paid public servants are vulnerable to generous bribes from traffickers. Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytcamer-06.04.99-09:50:10-21228