Source: Associated Press Mexico Overturns Drug Lord Sentence By ANITA SNOW MEXICO CITY (AP) In a move that could strain U.S.Mexico relations ahead of a visit by President Clinton, a tribunal has overturned the sentence of a drug lord convicted of killing U.S. federal agent Enrique Camarena 12 years ago. Rafael Caro Quintero was convicted in the highly publicized death of Camarena, now considered a drugwar martyr among fellow drug agents. The Mexican Attorney General's Office said Friday there was no danger Caro Quintero would be freed because he already is serving time for another conviction. The 40year sentence in the Camarena death was overturned on a technicality, and another one could conceivably be imposed after more court proceedings. In the unlikely event that Caro Quintero is released from all his Mexican sentences, there is a longstanding, provisional request on file in Mexico for his arrest and extradition to the United States, according to a U.S. Justice Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. U.S. officials in Mexico City and Washington had no comment. But the tribunal's decision was expected to raise tension in the days leading to Clinton's visit here May 57, when the president hopes to address disputes about drug enforcement and immigration policy. News of the legal maneuver angered Camarena's former fellow agents, who still affectionately refer to him as ``Kiki.'' ``Kiki's killing symbolized corruption at its worst in Mexico,'' said Phil Jordan, a retired DEA special agent in Dallas and former director of the El Paso Intelligence Center. ``We know why Kiki was taken from us because the government was working in complicity with the godfathers of the drug trade,'' he said. ``To even reconsider Caro Quintero's sentence is sickening and an insult of major proportions.'' U.S.Mexico relations had plunged to one of their alltime lows after Camarena's Feb. 7, 1985, kidnapping in Guadalajara, the capital of Jalisco state and a major drug trafficking center. His body and that of his Mexican pilot, both showing signs of torture, were found a month later. American officials accused Mexican counterparts of letting Camarena's killers get away. Caro Quintero was eventually hunted down in Costa Rica. At one point, U.S. Customs agents virtually blocked the U.S. border with Mexico, slowing traffic to a standstill while screening all incoming Mexicans. Camarena has since been lionized by fellow U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents. A drug intelligence center in Texas has been named after him. Caro Quintero, once one of Mexico's most powerful drug barons, was sentenced in 1989 for complicity in the 1985 kidnapping, torture and murder of Camarena. A federal panel of magistrates in Jalisco on Thursday struck that sentence down after defense lawyers said their client had been denied the right to crossexamine codefendants. New court proceedings will be held in the case while Caro Quintero remains at the highsecurity Almoloya prison outside Mexico City, prosecutors said. Caro Quintero already is serving a 34year sentence on a conviction stemming from a raid in central Mexico that netted up to five tons of marijuana and cost Caro Quintero and his colleagues an estimated $8 billion in lost sales. A former Sinaloa cartel boss, Caro Quintero is said to have pioneered the first links between Colombian cocaine cartels and the Mexican smugglers who transport the cocaine into the United States.