Pubdate: Tue, 29 Feb 2000
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2000 The New York Times Company
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Author: Sam Dillon

TIJUANA OFFICIAL SAYS SLAYING SHOWS TRAFFICKERS' POWER

MEXICO CITY, Feb. 28 - A day after gunmen killed the police chief in
Tijuana, the sprawling city that borders California, the state governor
said drug traffickers were out of control there partly because many federal
authorities were in their pay.

"The drugs are coming in by land, sea and air," Gov. Alejandro Gonzalez
Alcocer of Baja California said in a telephone interview. "The federal
authorities have jurisdiction. But frankly we don't have much confidence in
them. We worry that if we try to coordinate operations with them, our plans
will be communicated to the traffickers."

On a visit to Baja on Friday by President Ernesto Zedillo, Mr. Gonzalez
urged the president to speak out against the traffickers, who have been
blamed for the killings of 60 people in Tijuana in eight weeks. In a
speech, the president said, "We have to make these criminals understand
that they're not welcome in Baja California, that the only home they
deserve are the prisons."

On Sunday, gunmen in cars ambushed and killed Chief Alfredo de la Torre
Marquez as he drove on a highway. Dozens of bullets hit him, the police said.

One reasonable hypothesis, Mr. Gonzalez said, is that the traffickers had
ordered the assassination as a response to the president. Mr. Zedillo, an
economist who was trained at Yale and who has rarely displayed personal
interest in the narcotics problems, did not refer today to Chief de la
Torre's killing in his speech to a government audience. A spokesman said
the president would have no comment on the situation in Tijuana. "Its just
a police matter," a presidential aide said.

Mr. Gonzalez, who belongs to the center-right National Action Party, said
that on Mr. Zedillo's visit last week he realized that the president had no
plans to mention the rising narcotics violence in Baja. As the two drove
together to a public appearance in Mexicali, on the border east of Tijuana,
the governor asked Mr. Zedillo to address the drug problem, Mr. Gonzalez
recounted.

Minutes later in his speech, Mr. Zedillo promised to send the interior
minister and attorney general to Tijuana to review federal crime efforts in
Baja. Spokesmen for those officials said today that they would go to
Tijuana on Tuesday.

As Mr. Zedillo was in Tijuana, the foreign ministry was lodging a protest
against Ambassador Jeffrey Davidow of the United States, who said last week
that Mexico had assumed a leading role in international drug traffic. That
statement provoked an outpouring of recriminations from Mexican politicians.
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