The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, a NASA official updates the troubled mission to Mars; Margaret Warner looks at the end result of the trade talks in Seattle; and Ray Suarez interviews the top U.S. drug official and the attorney general of Mexico about Mexico's drug wars. It all follows our summary of the news this Monday.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: There was another school shooting today; it happened in Fort Gibson, Oklahoma some 50 miles southeast of Tulsa. Sheriff's deputies said a 13- year-old boy wounded four students at a middle school. Their injuries did not appear to be life-threatening. Deputies said the boy was captured at the school with a semiautomatic gun still in his hand. They said he did not give a motive for the attack. There was this reaction from one of the students.

STUDENT: I wasn't really sure what was going on and then I went into the cafeteria because they were telling us to go there. Then one of my friends came from the middle school building. He said there was blood everywhere and that there was a whole bunch of kids down and I knew some of the people who were down. I didn't know what happened at Fort Gibson, so it kind of scared me.

JIM LEHRER: NASA scientists were losing hope today they will ever hear from the Mars Polar Lander. The team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory planned to make another attempt early tomorrow. The Lander and two smaller probes have been silent since reaching Mars on Friday. In September, another Mars Orbiter was lost because of human error. We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary. There was a split verdict today in the criminal case against the aircraft maintenance firm charged in the ValuJet crash. A Miami jury convicted the firm, Sabretech, of improperly packaging oxygen canisters aboard the plane. But Sabretech and two former employees were found not guilty of conspiracy and making false statements. All 110 people aboard were killed when a fire broke out and the jet plunged into the Florida Everglades in 1996. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed today to review the Miranda case. It's the '96 landmark ruling that police must give suspects a series of warnings, beginning with "You have the right to remain silent." The issue now comes from a Maryland bank robbery case. A lower court said failure to read suspects their rights does not automatically exclude evidence in federal cases. Overseas today, the Russian military issued a warning to civilians and rebels in Chechnya's capital: Leave by Saturday or be destroyed. Mark Webster of Independent Television News Reports.

MARK WEBSTER, ITN: With much of the city already in ruins, the Russian government has now signed Grozny's death warrant. Huddling together again tonight in cellars and makeshift shelters, time is running out for the remaining civilian population. Up to 50,000 people may still live here, too frightened to leave, and threatened with destruction if they stay. Thousands of these leaflets were dropped by Russian planes, warning that anyone left in Grozny after Saturday would be considered a terrorist. Yet many of those trapped are too old or infirm to get out. Since there's no linger any public transport, those who can't walk can't leave. Elsewhere in Chechnya, the Russians are consolidating their positions. Over the past few days, there has been fierce fighting here in Argun. But these troops said they've driven the rebel forces out. (Speaking Russian) "There wasn't much resistance," he said, "but they left a lot of mines behind which we had to make safe."

JIM LEHRER: In Washington, President Clinton said the ultimatum on Grozny threatened innocent civilians; he warned Russia would pay a heavy price for its actions. Also today, Russian President Yeltsin was released from a Moscow hospital. He had been there for a week being treated for pneumonia. After his release, he met with Ukraine's president at the Kremlin, then left for his country residence to continue recuperating. He's to travel to China Wednesday for meetings with President Jiang. A search for the assets of Holocaust victims found 54,000 unclaimed accounts in Swiss banks. That's what an international panel reported today in Zurich. Officials said they believed last year's settlement between Jewish groups and the banks would be enough to pay all claims. It totaled $1.25 billion. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to a Mars update; a trade talks overview; and the Mexican drug wars.

UPDATE - MARS MISSION

JIM LEHRER: Our Mars update comes from Richard Zurek, project scientist for the Mars Polar Lander mission. I spoke with him earlier this evening from the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena.

Mr. Zurek, welcome.

RICHARD ZUREK: Hello.

JIM LEHRER: Where do matters stand at the moment, sir?

RICHARD ZUREK: We haven't heard from the spacecraft since it turned away from communicating with Earth just prior to entry into the atmosphere. We're proceeding, assuming that the spacecraft is operating on the surface, and yet unable to communicate with us at the present time.

JIM LEHRER: Do you... why do you assume that it is, in fact, on the surface of Mars?

RICHARD ZUREK: We've tracked it right to the point where it would have entered the atmosphere, and at the angle that it was approaching the atmosphere, we do know that it would be on the surface of the planet. In fact, we have a fair idea of where it might be.

JIM LEHRER: But you have no further... this is all conjecture based on reading things, rather than actually knowing it for a fact, is that correct?

RICHARD ZUREK: Yes, it is. It's an extrapolation from where it was at the top of the atmosphere.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Now, you have...when is the next opportunity to try to maintain.... or to try to establish communications?

RICHARD ZUREK: What we're going to try to do is shortly after midnight out here on the West Coast, we're going to try to have the Lander communicate back to Earth by using the Orbiter, the Mars global surveyor, as a communication relay satellite.

JIM LEHRER: Now, you've tried that before, have you not?

RICHARD ZUREK: We have, but in a way-- I know this is a bit confusing-- if you think of it as there are two ways that the Lander can return data -- one is by a direct-to-Earth radio link, and the other is through this relay of the orbiter -- there's also two states that the Lander might be in on the surface of the planet. One is that it's executing the pre-planned activity list, and in that case, we should have heard from it yesterday. We did not. The other possibility is that it's in what we call "safe mode," where it's detected some problem, and it's put itself into a condition where it's shed all the unnecessary activities and is waiting to communicate with us. We have to program it to contact the orbiter if it's in that state. We put those commands on last night.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Now, is there any particular or special reason to be optimistic that it will work this time?

RICHARD ZUREK: Well, this is really the fourth of those four contingency paths that we can try, those combinations of what is the Lander on the surface, and what data path should we try. We haven't really tried this one before, and so we're still hopeful that tomorrow morning we'll get a signal back.

JIM LEHRER: And if there is no signal back, then what is your next move after that?

RICHARD ZUREK: Well, we do still have some options left. We'll try to get the direct-to- earth antenna to do a bigger sky search than it's done in its previous attempts to communicate with us, and we also...

JIM LEHRER: Now excuse me, that... excuse me, that's the antenna on the Lander, right? That's assuming the Lander is there, and the antenna is working.

RICHARD ZUREK: That is correct. And what we're trying to do is to get it to move quickly across the sky while we listen for it back on the Earth, and if we detect a signal, we can then tell it where we were, relative to it.

JIM LEHRER: And then if that doesn't work, then we're headed for, what, a declaration that this thing just didn't work?

RICHARD ZUREK: Well, there are a few things left, but the reality is, is that the probability of success is greatly diminished at that point. Our biggest chance is really to hear tomorrow morning. There are a few things that we would continue to try, and we would repeat some of the earlier attempts at communicating, but the odds are that those would not be successful.

JIM LEHRER: Yeah. This must be terribly disappointing to you, Mr. Zurek, is it not?

RICHARD ZUREK: It is. We've spent a great deal of time, the science teams and the spacecraft teams, getting the spacecraft ready. It's particularly frustrating. Here we were with the Lander approaching Mars, ready to send us data back. It may even be on the surface in a working condition, and yet we're unable to communicate with it.

JIM LEHRER: Now, there are two other Mars missions using similar equipment on the planning books, are there not?

RICHARD ZUREK: That's correct. The two missions that will be launched in April of 2001-- another Orbiter and a Lander-- are using the same basic design as the 1998 spacecraft did.

JIM LEHRER: But if you don't know what went wrong with this one, can you go ahead with a new one?

RICHARD ZUREK: Well, you might recall with the Mars climate orbiter, which we lost, that was really due to a navigating error, navigating the spacecraft too close to the planet. The spacecraft itself seems to have been okay. In the case of the Polar Lander, we don't yet know that we won't be able to reestablish contact. If we can't, it will be hard to figure out exactly what went wrong, whether it was something that happened as it approached the surface, or whether there was a hazard on the surface itself that we've not been able to see from orbit.

JIM LEHRER: Somebody over the weekend made the black box analogy, that an airplane goes down, if you don't have the black box, you don't know what caused the plane to go down, and you don't know what to fix next time. Is that...would that be a similar situation in your case, if you cannot find out what happened?

RICHARD ZUREK: It could be. We're really relying upon getting some kind of communication back from the spacecraft for us to learn more. We do have the possibility that we will try to look for the spacecraft with the camera that's onboard the Mars global surveyor. The spacecraft itself is probably too small to see directly, but we might see the parachute, or we might see the shadow of the Lander, if it's standing on the surface, as we expect.

JIM LEHRER: And these things could happen over the next period of the next few days, next few weeks, next few months?

RICHARD ZUREK: Mostly, in the next few weeks.

JIM LEHRER: Okay. Well, Mr. Zurek, good luck one more time, and thank you very much.

RICHARD ZUREK: Thank you.

FOCUS - COLLIDING WORLDS

JIM LEHRER: Now Margaret Warner looks at the aftermath of the Seattle trade meeting.

MARGARET WARNER: Joining us first for a NewsMaker interview is the woman who led the U.S. effort in Seattle, U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky. Welcome, Madam Ambassador.

CHARLENE BARSHEFSKY: My pleasure. Good to be here.

MARGARET WARNER: Just a few days before the meeting began, you said... You predicted it will all come together, as you put it, and you said you see at the end everyone knows that failure is not an option. What went wrong? Did you just miscalculate how the other countries felt?

CHARLENE BARSHEFSKY: I think the countries came to Seattle with the full intent to negotiate in good faith. I think as the meetings went on, though, countries became increasingly concerned about taking the political leap and making the hard, political decisions. For 50 years, for example, agricultural trade has dogged the international trading system and has been the single most critical factor in leading to negotiations that don't fully close. We had similar problem here as well. There were many other issues on which countries increasingly became uncomfortable either because they weren't really able to get what they wanted, they thought they had to compromise too much, or because other countries felt their requests weren't being responded to adequately. And this happens I think from time to time. It's happened three or four times in the course of the Uruguay round. It happened when we first made a try at a global telecom agreement two years ago, when we first made a try to a global financial services agreement. We took a time out in each of those instances, stepped back, similarly on China. From April until now, step back, and countries over time reposition.

MARGARET WARNER: Now the EU trade commissioner, Pascal Lamy, said today-- he was back home in Europe-- he suggested it was also President Clinton who in the end wasn't able to make the concessions necessary. He blamed the political calendar. And he said, you know, nobody likes to make concessions in an election campaign.

CHARLENE BARSHEFSKY: No. I think that this is absolutely not the case as demonstrated by the President having called for a round at this point in time, for the President coming to Seattle, the fact that for the last several years and including in particular this year, the President has personally taken on among the greatest challenges with respect to global leadership: The Asian financial crisis, debt relief, China, the call for a new round-- these are massive issues which he is certainly not obligated to undertake but he has and he did with respect to the round as well. This isn't an election issue. It's a question of countries simply not yet able-- yet able-- to come together on a common agenda.

MARGARET WARNER: Do you think, in retrospect, the labor issue either shouldn't have been promoted quite so aggressively by the President and the delegation or could it have been handled differently in some way?

CHARLENE BARSHEFSKY: I think there are two aspects. With respect to our handling of the issue, we-- Europe, Canada, a number of countries-- made proposals with respect to labor. We were working quite well together. And indeed we were in the process of trying to put together a unified draft text on labor, but there's a second issue, and that is that developing countries, particularly the lower income and the poorest countries, are terribly concerned that the developed world will condition trade on issues to which those countries cannot adequately respond as yet. In other words, countries subject to blinding poverty see as their first task growth, getting people out of poverty, and that is their focus andthey tend to be much less inclined to add into the equation the labor and environmental issues. And I think we... I think groups promoting those issues need to be very sensitive and need to understand fully the great concerns of the developing world who fear that they will not emerge, not be allowed to emerge from situations of terribly low income, income inequality and in the case of sub-Saharan Africa grinding poverty.

MARGARET WARNER: What impact do you think all the street protests had and what does the energy and intensity of those protests tell you about what you're going to have to do in the future, what the whole sort of global trade community will have to do in the future?

CHARLENE BARSHEFSKY: I think what we're seeing is a democratization of the process of trade. And I think that that is a good thing, that is to say, notions of transparency in the system, the idea that there are issues that also must be discussed in the context of trade, whether labor or environment, I think these are very important principles, but I also think that the protesters did not speak with one voice. I think, of course, the violence was deplorable and can't be excused on any basis. Peaceful protest I think was effective in raising the profile of these issues in a very responsible and careful way, but I do think that for all countries the issue in general of the kind of democratization that has swept the world will also begin to sweep the international institutions. We saw this in the debate on IMF funding; we see this now with respect to WTO. And it will be the challenge for these institutions to respond to cries of increased openness, increased transparency, participation, increased accountability and of course this is part of the agenda that we put forward.

MARGARET WARNER: Okay. Very briefly before we go, do you think there's any chance of getting global trade talks started during the last year of the Clinton administration?

CHARLENE BARSHEFSKY: I think there is always a chance. I called for a timeout in the talks because I made the judgment that the talks could not possibly close on a basis with which countries would be comfortable. And, of course, that in and of itself immediately tells you you'll never have a productive negotiation even were an agreement signed. Countries, I think, will take a step back. We will do a number of soundings. The director-general of the WTO will do likewise. And then we'll proceed from there.

MARGARET WARNER: Okay. Madam Ambassador, well, thank you very much.

CHARLENE BARSHEFSKY: My pleasure.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, for further perspective on Seattle and beyond, we turn to Mickey Kantor, former U.S. Trade Representative, and former Commerce Secretary in the Clinton administration. Tom Hayden, State Senator from California and longtime liberal activist; he took part in some of the protest marches in Seattle last week. Arvind Panagariya, a professor and co-director of the Center for International Economics at the University of Maryland. He also writes a column for a newspaper in India, the "Economic Times." And Fred Bergsten, director of the Institute for International Economics, and a former Treasury official under President Carter. He also was in Seattle last week hosting a seminar on WTO issues. Welcome, gentlemen. Tom Hayden, what do you make of Ambassador Barshefsky's assessment of why the talks failed. Do you share her view?

TOM HAYDEN: Well, I'm glad to hear the ambassador talking about democratization and greater accountability. I think that the failure was due to an underestimation that was kind of a cluelessness in Seattle, if you will, of the strength of the reservations and the strength of the antagonism towards the shaping of a new international order with such a priority on investor rights without due consideration of human rights and labor and environmentalism.

MARGARET WARNER: Fred, is that what you saw a fundamental miscalculation there?

FRED BERGSTEN: No, I think we face the traditional disputes among the different trading countries. The United States and Europe bickered over agriculture and also some issues the U.S. did not want on the agenda, which the Europeans wanted, like investment and competition policy. Likewise the United States....

MARGARET WARNER: You're talking there about U.S. anti-dumping laws?

FRED BERGSTEN: No that's in my second category. The U.S. and the developing countries went logger heads, the U.S. wanted to bring labor and environmental standards on to the agenda but were unwilling to meet the developing country interests in revising U.S. anti-dumping statutes, speeding up the liberalization of our textile quotas, spreading out the phase-ins that some of the developing countries took on back in the Uruguay round. So, it was a two-way clash. I think it was the traditional debates among trading partners. I don't think the demonstrations in the streets had anything material to do with it. But these are big problems. If not resolved quickly, the costs will be very large both for the United States and the world economy.

MARGARET WARNER: How do you see the causes of why it collapsed in Seattle, professor? I mean, do you see it, as Tom Hayden does, that with this - there's sort of this new constituency out there saying we want to be heard or do you think it's as Fred Bergsten thinks really kind of the traditional trade issues that couldn't get resolved?

ARVIND PANAGORIYA: I come here on the side of Fred... particularly I think Fred has emphasized the developing countryside, which has to do with the labor standards and to some degree I find Ms. Barshefsky's assessment a little bit too optimistic. Initially I think even by November labor standards had been put formally on the table by the United States for the creation of a developing working group, and I think a lot of the developing countries, particularly India, were very leery of the intrusion of such a working group in the WTO. We have sort of from India push for putting it into the international labor organization.

MARGARET WARNER: But that's where a lot of the intensity in the street was coming from.

ARVIND PANAGARIYA: That's absolutely right. You have to recognize however that that was not the view of the civil society from the developing countries. Quite a few workers' unions in the developing world have, in fact, gone the other way actually opposing the labor standards into the WTO as such. The view that came out of Seattle was quite -- sort of developed countries view. There are trade unions out there with memberships over 120 million people who have actually signed on declarations which oppose the introduction of labor standards into the WTO.

MARGARET WARNER: What's your view of why these talks foundered?

MICKEY KANTOR: First of all, hello Tom, how are you? Nice to see you. First of all economics aren't in front of our politics, politics with a little "t." Economics have gone so far and gone so fast we've forgotten we have got to bring people along. Number 2 it's credibility, it's relevancy, it's accountability, none of which the WTO has in terms not only with people here in the United States -- all over the world. We have got to address the new issues of trade or we're not going to have credibility for the WTO. Look, globalization, I sort of agree -- globalization is a fact of life. It's going to be with us. We've got to make it work not only for corporations, which it has to, to grow capital and to grow jobs but also for people to grow standards of living and to raise the level of people all over the world to obliterate poverty if we can. And trade is the way out. Now, in order to do that, the WTO is important. In order to make it credible, we're going to have to address issues like labor and the environment, bribery and corruption, all these issues that we never felt were part of trade. It's time for the WTO not only to do that but to open up its processes. It's one of the most secret organizations in the world and it's maddening that it continues to be so.

MARGARET WARNER: Is that the problem, Tom Hayden, that there is this backlash against globalization and that no one is making the case with any credibility for why it's a good thing, why it's positive and that it can benefit more than just the corporations as Mickey Kantor put it?

TOM HAYDEN: Well, I think there is a need to be internationalist and have a very positive view, but you don't have to be protectionist to worry about some of the intrusions. For instance, I've seen a Law Review article that identified 95 California laws, some of which I wrote, that would be lost if these secretive dispute resolution panels had their way. And so we have an imbalance here. We can't expect Americans to give up environmental standards, public health standards, wage levels, local and state government laws in exchange for a kind of abstract mercantilism. But to say no is not enough. I think we... the ingredients of a big "yes" are there: Trade, human rights, bringing people's wages up around the world instead of lowering ours to those levels, environmentalism. That's a big picture that I think the United States ought to align itself with.

MARGARET WARNER: But Fred Bergsten, this is the kind of thing the President at least has been talking about and that Charlene Barshefsky or Mickey Kantor when he had that job. Why doesn't it take?

FRED BERGSTEN: It's a peculiar disconnect particularly at this point in time in the American economy when our unemployment rate is at a 30-year low, our economy is growing rapidly, with no inflation. Globalization and trade liberalization deserve an enormous amount of the credit for that. How has it been possible for the U.S. to cut unemployment so low without treating inflation, which everybody feared five years ago was impossible? Part of the answer is globalization and trade liberalization. It has put competitive pressure on our economy. It has kept prices down because of import competition. It has created jobs, indeed good jobs, with wages rising, not falling as Tom Hayden suggested. So there's a huge disconnect between the facts and the perceptions. The President has tried to articulate it. He must not have done it strongly and loudly enough, but the leadership of the country has simply got to get across the message. Now there may be a place to bring in higher standards from various aspects of trade-related issues but the fundamental economics of it is a big plus not just for corporations but for American workers. The 30 million jobs that have been created in the last ten years -- all of that in large part, as the President repeatedly says, due to trade expansion, trade liberalization, globalization. It's a plus for the working men and women not just the corporationsas some of the rhetoric would have you believe.

MARGARET WARNER: But how do the publics in the developing countries, Professor, feel? Do they feel globalization has paid off for them?

ARVIND PANAGARIYA: Most certainly. I think developing countries have been the largest beneficiaries in some ways of the open markets. And if you look at the Asian experience and the recent experiences as well, opening up their own as well as the developing countries have helped generate growth enormously but I think... I sort of agree essentially with that, that if we really stuck to the trade liberalization agenda, therefore gone on to - gone on with services and even industry and products I think much progress would have been made at Seattle.

MARGARET WARNER: You mean, never bring up the labor and environmental....

ARVIND PANAGARIYA: Developing countries are not against that actually. What they are arguing is that let's take the labor standard issue in the international labor organization where it belong and environmental discussions are underway in the WTO, so it's not as though environmental discussions are not there. They are very much a part of the WTO discussions currently. So if this had been the trade liberalization I think it would have taken off.

MARGARET WARNER: So, how do you bring developing countries move to the view that the President has and that you expressed that these issues do have to be brought up?

MICKEY KANTOR: Two or three ways. Number one is we are going to have to have a continuing dialogue. The President has been talking about eight years since October 4, 1992 at North Carolina State. The vice president went to Marakash in 1994 and advanced labor environment in opening up the WTO. Seattle I think was a important time, not the violence which all of us deplore but the time where people became aware in this country, the largest trading nation on earth, that the WTO does make a difference. What we're going to have to do is understand if we're going to do is understand - if we're going to protect intellectual property and investment, if we're going to build credibility for an increased World Trade Organization and increased liberalization of trade, increased growing standards of living around the world, we're going to have to address these so-called new issues. If you see a turtle sitting on a fence post, you understand it didn't get there by accident. Credibility is the centerpiece of what we're going to have to build at the WTO. If we don't, if we don't, we're going to rue that day because we're going to find out we don't have the support of the people, therefore the support of their governments, therefore the WTO is going to fall of its own weight.

MARGARET WARNER: And when you talk about the turtle on the fence, that's the backlash.

MICKEY KANTOR: That's the backlash. That's not addressing the legitimate and rational issues that affect people's lives. You can't raise standards of living unless we affect core labor standards. What are those -- child labor, slave labor, prison labor, right to collectively bargain, freedom of association and discrimination in the workplace -- not wages. Those are not legitimate comparative advantage. We need to address those, address them in the WTO And we'll make great progress.

MARGARET WARNER: So can the WTO -- go ahead.

TOM HAYDEN: Well, it sounds as if we're all more or less in agreement here. I'd like to clarify it because if there's this much agreement, then what did happen up there?

MARGARET WARNER: Right.

TOM HAYDEN: What I saw were I don't know how many tens of thousands of people-- I haven't seen anything like it in a very long time. I saw Teamsters and Machinists who were concerned about losing jobs to sweat shops. I saw environmentalists. I saw women. I saw people in the street doing the most phenomenal acts and courageous acts I might say of civil disobedience who actually managed to stop this organization of 135 countries in its tracks. What were they so upset about? If everybody is in agreement that it should be reformed, that it should be transparent, it should be accountable, all these issues should be on the table, then was this just a big misunderstanding? I think we have to be a little more candid that the momentum of the WTO was more in an investor direction, more in an elite direction and that this was a cry that came out of the streets that stopped it and now we have to take the opportunity, hopefully, for this constructive dialogue about how to reform it or create something in its place.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Thank you, Tom Hayden I'm afraid we're going to have to leave it there. Thank you, Professor, Fred Bergsten and Mickey Kantor.

FOCUS - MURDERS IN MEXICO

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, the Mexican graves mystery, and to Ray Suarez.

RAY SUAREZ: After a week of searching, U.S. And Mexican authorities have found the remains of six bodies just south of the U.S.- Mexico border. They've combed four desert ranches looking for as many as 200 people who have been missing. Some may be Americans. The search began after an FBI informant said the area contained bodies of people killed by drug lords. The six bodies are all men between the ages of 35 and 50. One had been shot in the head. The sites are between ten and 20 miles south of Ciudad Juarez, which sits on the Rio Grande just across the border from El Paso, Texas. Last week, President Clinton commented on the discovery of the graves.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: It's a horrible example, apparently, of excesses of the drug dealing cartels in Mexico. And I think it reinforces the imperative of our not only trying to protect our border, but to work with the Mexican authorities to try to combat these. You know, we had a lot of success a few years ago in taking down a number of the Colombian drug cartels. And one of the adverse consequences of that was a lot of the operations were moved north into Mexico.

RAY SUAREZ: Just a few years ago, Juarez was the headquarters for one of Mexico's largest and most violent drug cartels. Law enforcement officials believe the Juarez cartel was responsible for shipping tons of Colombian cocaine and marijuana from Mexico to the United States. Its leader, Amado Carillo Fuentes, was Mexico's number one cocaine trafficker until his death two years ago following botched plastic surgery. It was suspected Carrillo was trying to change his appearance to evade police. 600 Mexican soldiers have secured the area as work goes on, unearthing bones and bits of clothing. An iron and concrete barrier topped with razor wire keeps reporters and others away from one ranch. Some of the soldiers wear ski masks to protect their identity from drug lords. A team of 65 FBI agents and forensic experts based in El Paso are assisting in the investigation. The remains will be sent to Washington for DNA testing. The appearance of such a large group of American officials on Mexican territory has stirred resentment there. On Thursday, the Mexican congress voted to prevent President Ernesto Zedillo from going ahead with a planned visit to Washington. Mexico's attorney general, Jorge Madrazo, and FBI Director Louis Freeh toured one ofthe ranches Friday. Both men denied that FBI participation infringed on Mexican sovereignty.

LOUIS FREEH: The FBI, when it makes such assistance here, of course, has no jurisdiction. We are neither carrying out any law enforcement function or conducting investigation under our own authority. We are here simply as partners and invited guests and in this case technical experts.

RAY SUAREZ: At the site of the search in Northern Mexico, authorities believe it could take months to unearth all the remains and identify the victims.

RAY SUAREZ: We're joined now from Mexico city by Mexico's attorney general Jorge Madrazo Cuellar, and by General Barry McCaffrey, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. He joins us from the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington.

Barry McCaffrey, recently a former DEA official has been quoted as saying Americans knew where the bodies were buried roughly since the early '90s and didn't go get them because some of the same agencies they had to work with were some of the people responsible for putting the bodies there. Your reaction.

BARRY MC CAFFREY: It's hard to imagine that. Look, there's an enormous threat to Mexico. Violence and corruption. Thank God we've got Louis Freeh and the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the border patrol, federal agencies that are equipped and trained to do this kind of work. Attorney General Madrazo who is now working with our own FBI, is trying to confront one of the major threats to Mexican national security. That is going to involve partnership. That's really what you're seeing in action right now.

RAY SUAREZ: So, Mr. Attorney General, is the size of the American delegation down there and the kind of assistance that they're giving to your own drug police a sign that that partnership is working?

JORGE MADRAZO CUELLAR: I think that our relationship is working. It's actually really very good between the FBI and the PGR - the DEA and the PGR, the Customs officials and my office the attorney general institution. I think that we have recovered a lot of confidence. We are doing a very good job. Ciud Juarez is only one example. During this year of 1999 we have worked together in four major operations. Ciud Juarez is the last one, but we work in the southwest operation, in the impunity operation. I think that the results are very good.

RAY SUAREZ: Did you have to spend some time in negotiation before American officers were able to come over setting ground rules for whether they would be armed, what sort of operations they would take part in?

JORGE MADRAZO CUELLAR: We have been collecting information and intelligence along the last weeks in order to discover the precise points, the spots. I think that that week really was very important for the success of this operation.

RAY SUAREZ: General McCaffrey, last week the President said that what you see happening now in Mexico-- cocaine loads growing dramatically, marijuana shipments up and the violence is all part of a spillover affect from Columbia, that efforts the on cracking down on drug gangs are starting to put too much heat on them and that traffic is moving North. What do you think of that suggestion?

BARRY MC CAFFREY: Well, you know, most Americans when they talk about drugs are referring to cocaine. Clearly more than half of the cocaine in t world now is produced in Columbia and the rest of it in two other Latin American nations, Bolivia and Peru. We are a giant engine sucking drugs through Mexico into the United States. We spend $57 billion a year on it. And that's really the source of the problem. It generates enormous levels of violence and corruption on both sides of that border. There's two pieces we're working. One, we've got to cooperate with Mexico. There's 100 million of them, they're our second biggest trading partner. And they're also serious about this. The other piece of the action though, the most important part of the national drug strategy is we have to reduce the number of Americans consuming these drugs. There's four million of us who are chronically addicted. That's the heart and soul of the problem.

RAY SUAREZ: And Attorney General Madrazo, what do you think about the President's suggestion that you're seeing a spillover from Columbia?

JORGE MADRAZO CUELLAR: Well, it is not easy to understand what is going on in Colombia. But let me stress that in Mexico during 1999 we have established very important records and seizures of marijuana and cocaine, the most important in history more than 13,000 Mexicans are working everyday on a daily basis in order to seal our territory, our land, our coast and our air space in order to divert the cocaine shipments. We don't like cocaine in Mexico, so we are working very hard with the army and with the navy and of course cooperating very much with our U.S. partners.

RAY SUAREZ: Mr. Attorney General, General McCaffrey's remarks would reflect that he realizes that there's an American component to this problem, that it's America's hunger for the drug that is giving you the transshipment point status. Do you think that Mexicans in the streets of your cities, those reading your newspapers in the morning, understand that at our highest levels maybe that's part of policy, but that Americans in the street don't realize our drug problem affects your country?

JORGE MADRAZO CUELLAR: I think that we have an important understanding of what is happening with drug trafficking. I think that most Mexicans understand that we have to fight against consumption but also against production and distribution of drugs. So this is an integral phenomenon. And we have to fight against all pieces of this phenomenon.

RAY SUAREZ: In many countries in the past that have become transshipment points like Mexico, a domestic drug problem has grown up where there sometimes wasn't one before. Are you seeing that in Mexico?

JORGE MADRAZO CUELLAR: Yes, I think that we are suffering that problem in Mexico, and the cocaine problem is increasing not at the level of the states but we have some problems in major cities in the south border and also in the north border on consumption of cocaine. So we have to tackle very quick that problem.

RAY SUAREZ: Barry McCaffrey, in the most recent round of certification, Mexico was certified as an operating partner of the United States in the war on drugs, but during those same hearings that resulted in the certification, chief of operations of the DEA said there was still a lot of information, sensitive information, that he felt very uncomfortable sharing with his Mexican counterparts. What do you do about that? Has it improved?

BARRY MC CAFFREY: Well, I mean we've gone from literally no cooperation probably in the 1980s after this terrible situation in Mexico with the murder of Pomerana, and the subsequent abduction of a Mexican citizen. Today the reality of it is the coast Guard, the U.S. Coast Guard and the Mexican navy do cooperate against drugs. There is a massive training cooperation going on. We do share intelligence. There's no question, as President Zedillo and Attorney General Madrazo will note, that there's a huge problem threatening Mexican democratic institutions. In my view, in our view, we're going to have to work as partners with Mexico respectfully and patiently in the coming 20 years to do something about it.

RAY SUAREZ: Will they south of the border have instituted a new police force to take the place of some old structures? Can you tell the attorney general tonight that you have greater confidence that your DEA chief of office remarks weren't necessarily reflective of the whole administration?

BARRY MC CAFFREY: We don't listen to what people say. We watch what they do. What you're seeing happening right on the ground in Mexico is Louis Freeh, thank God for the FBI, is cooperating fully with Mexican law enforcement authorities. We have no option. We're going to protect the two nations. We have to work patiently as partners against this enormous threat to both nations.

RAY SUAREZ: And Attorney General Madrazo, do you something closer to a handle on the corruption that's been plaguing your police forces in recent years?

JORGE MADRAZO CUELLAR: Yes, we are working very hard cleaning the house. We have to provide results to our society and we have to dismiss all people who have misconducts or are committing crimes in the police forces. Let me say that during the last two years, we have put 2,000 police officers out of the institution. We have prosecuted criminal charges against 354 people. I think that we have to clean the house, to clean the police force and to provide for people. I think we are succeeding step by step?

RAY SUAREZ: In your own press, Mr. Attorney General, you've been accused of compromising your country's sovereignty by allowing united states law enforcement officials to work on your soil. Our two countries have had a sometimes difficult history. How do you respond to your critics in Mexico?

JORGE MADRAZO CUELLAR: I think that opinion is part of democracy so I have to respect the pluralism of opinions, but I must say that we have been working under the frame of the treaty that we have celebrated with the United States, the bilateral instrument. So every operation is in accordance with law. Let me say that the FBI operation, the assistant that would have requested to the FBI, is only with the experts. No police of the FBI is working or Mexico, only experts, medical forensics.

RAY SUAREZ: And finally, Barry McCaffrey, with the seizures up, do we also have to assume that there are loads getting through along with these huge loads of cocaine and marijuana that are being found?

BARRY MC CAFFREY: Oh, there's no question. Look, Ray, we probably use 11 metric tons of hero win a year in the United States. We seize maybe a ton or two at best. We seize about 100 metric tons of cocaine - we meaning the world law enforcement authorities. It's almost impossible to end drug addiction in America by working on the interdiction piece. What you have to do is work in cooperation with the international authorities. There is a Vienna Convention to which we're all signatories. You have got to try and confront these international criminals wherever they are. We're doing that, not just on FBI-Mexican police, but we're talking precursor chemical controls, money laundering, asset seizure, extraditions. Both nations, Mexico and the U.S., are extraditing criminals to the other country. That's the first time in our history that's happened.

RAY SUAREZ: Barry McCaffrey, Attorney General Madrazo, good to talk to you both.

JORGE MADRAZO CUELLAR: Thank you very much.

BARRY MC CAFFREY: Good to be here.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Monday: Four students were wounded in a shooting at a middle school in Fort Gibson, Oklahoma. Police said the gunman was a 13- year-old boy. A NASA team was losing hope in its efforts to reach the Mars Polar Lander. And a jury convicted a maintenance firm of improperly packaging hazardous materials in the '96 ValuJet crash. The company was cleared of conspiracy. We'll see you online, and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.