Effort to Decertify Mexico Fails in Senate

WASHINGTON — Fearful of roiling relations with Mexico, the Senate on Thursday night turned back an attempt to overturn President Clinton’s recent certification of the Mexican government as fully cooperative in the war on drugs.

The 54-45 vote against decertification, which crossed party and geographic lines, represented a foreign policy victory for the Clinton administration, but it was a grudging one. Many senators said they looked on Mexico’s drug-fighting efforts as meager but believed that a slap at the southern neighbor would only make matters worse.

The decertification attempt was led by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Sen. Paul Coverdell (R-Ga.), who charged Mexican officials with corruption and a glaring failure to capture or even harass drug lords. But their arguments, even when buttressed with charts and statistics, failed to sway enough of their colleagues.

Mexico’s efforts deserve bolstering, not blasting, many senators argued. “If we are going to win the war on drugs,” said Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), “the only way we are going to do it is through cooperation, and I don’t think harsh words against our neighbor are going to do it.”

Under the certification system, the president is called on every year to verify that Mexico and other countries where narcotics are produced or through which they are transported are fully cooperative in the drug war. If he fails to certify them, they are subject to economic sanctions.

The defeat of the Feinstein-Coverdell resolution put an end to official attempts to decertify Mexico this year. By law, the president’s decision on certification, which came at the end of February, stands unless both houses of Congress vote within 30 days to overturn it. Since the Senate failed, House action is moot.

Portions of the Senate debate seemed to reflect a growing belief in Congress that certification is too brutish a weapon to use in spurring other countries into cooperation.

Several senators chided the certification process as deeply flawed, and a movement appears to be growing within Congress to find another system.

Feinstein, who with Coverdell spearheaded a similar decertification bid last year, had hoped to attract votes to this year’s resolution by waiving any punishment for Mexico. But Senate parliamentarians ruled that the Senate only had the power to overturn the president’s certification--not to make decisions about punishment.

In her attack on certification, Feinstein told her colleagues, “I do not make these arguments lightly. Nor do I make them with any sense of pleasure.”

But she said that Mexico’s drug efforts were like “an inflated balloon--impressive to look at but hollow at the core and easily punctured.”

Feinstein had conceded Wednesday that she expected the decertification bid to fall short. But she argued that even a failed attempt was valuable, because it showed Mexican officials that many U.S. political leaders are unhappy with their anti-drug efforts.

Those opposing Feinstein included Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.). Overturning certification, he told reporters, “means the absolute, complete divorce from Mexico economically.”

“This is not just a signal we’re sending,” he said. “This is an absolute, complete collapse of relationships.”

Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) warned the Senate against venting “misguided anger . . . misguided frustration” at Mexico when the real problem is the failure of the United States to solve its drug consumption problem.

The voting lineups did not follow any clear patterns: Supporting decertification were 15 Democrats and 30 Republicans, and opposing it were 30 Democrats and 24 Republicans.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) joined Feinstein in voting for decertification. Daschle and Dodd’s opposition to the measure put them in alliance with such Republicans as Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. Thurmond said: “If we decertify Mexico, the problem will not go away but will only be exacerbated.”