Subject: US/Mexico Defense Meeting

Attributable to: Senior US and Mexico Officials

Wednesday, April 24, 1996 - 3:30 p.m.

[The subject of this DOD Background Briefing: Meeting between US Secretary of Defense William J. Perry and Secretary of National Defense Gen. Enrique Cervantes Aquirre, of the United Mexican States; also participating: Capt. Mike Doubleday, USN, DASD (Public Affairs)]

Captain Michael Doubleday: I think many of you are aware that there have been meetings today in the building between the U.S. Secretary of Defense and the Mexican National Defense Secretary. We are lucky to have two individuals with us to give you some background and context on those meetings for your reporting purposes they should be identified as a Senior Pentagon Official and a Senior Official of the Government of Mexico. And, with that I will turn the proceedings over to the first official who is a senior Pentagon official.

Q: I requested a portion of this reading to be on the record?

Q: Is this on the record?

A: We will, let's go through it first and then we'll see about doing that for you.

Senior Pentagon Official: I'm going to start and just give you a little bit of the context of the meeting and where it came from and so forth. And, then ____ will tell you some of the specific results and we'll take some questions and so forth on the meeting and then we can do some broader questions, okay?

Last October -- October 20-something or other -- Secretary Perry made a trip to Mexico, as you probably know. He met with General Cervantes in Mexico and they agreed to establish a bilateral working group to explore ways in which our militaries could cooperate better. This, of course, was somewhat unprecedented since the military organizations in the United States and Mexico had not had any relationship prior to this. So, the meeting today was the second meeting and, in a sense, it was a reciprocal meeting and that was part of its purpose was to just reciprocate the invitation to Secretary Perry. But much more importantly, it was to allow the bilateral working group, which had been established in that earlier meeting, to report its results to the two defense ministers and allow them to discuss these results among themselves and give the group further guidance for the future. The bilateral working group itself was kicked off last December, just a couple of months after the meeting with Perry and Cervantes in San Antonio and we organized its work into four different areas: first, was the question of the need of the Mexican military for counter-narcotics purposes; a second one was the way we might be able to cooperate with them in natural disasters; and then we had two other working groups that looked at mechanisms: one for force modernization the typical kinds of hardware and security assistance kinds of things that we do with lots of countries; and the other one, education and training -- also the typical kinds of things that we do with other countries as well, but specifically to look how we can in those area help meet the needs that were identified in the other two working groups.

So, this morning we had a very extensive presentation, to the two defense ministers, of the results in these four areas -- and we'll go into that in some detail, as much as you like; and then, after that, the two defense ministers agreed to institutionalize this process, keep this going, have the bilateral working group meet every six months. They did not at this time set another meeting for the two of them, but they will at some point in the future. But we are the two co-chairs of those bilateral working group, by the way, but I -- I think maybe that -- you can't quite identify us that way and meet Mike's -- that for your -- for your understanding of what we're doing here. But, not to change our identification as Mike stated it. And, so we will continue to work in these areas and perhaps in some other new ones as well as we go forward. I think at this point, maybe I'll invite my colleague to come up and make a few comments about the specifics and then we'll fill in the questions.

Senior Official of the GOM: Thank you very much. Well, as you already heard, we have four groups. These four groups have been meeting several times. One point for me that which is very, very important is that the basic thrust of this cooperation streams out a will by both Secretary Perry and Secretary Cervantes. It's built upon a basic sort of trust and confidence, in this respect. And, therefore, it started with a right of principles, very clear respect for each other, respect for the [inaudible] and the sensitivities, and with a clear objective of who's the enemy, so to speak. Where do we have to focus? Where do we have to improve? How can we expand our capacities so that we can be in fair position to fight certain different problems we have, including of course, drugs and so on, but that's not the only topic there are many others which are important.

In different groups there have been substantive progress made. In the training issue there is already three groups of Mexican officers -- trainers, really -- that at different times of the year will be receiving certain specific and specialized type of training. The group is already in the U.S. There is also important training, technical training for pilots and for people to maintain the helicopters and planes and, of course, in the other group we are talking about the possible transfers of some helicopters. These are not easy things to be done in one day. They are things that have to be worked out and all the support systems have to be there, so, these are areas where, for instance our army -- which is engaged in helping the PGR in the fight against drugs, and especially in the eradication -- needs to move very fast and to move a lot of people to get to the fields and to eradicate the fields or destroy them. So, these logistics are very complex and once you have more mobility, the capacities are enhanced. We think that the eradication is one of the strong points in the Mexican counter-narcotics policy -- has been very successful over the years, truly successful. But we can do much -- even much better than that given the capacity.

Q: Excuse me, are you talking about marijuana when you're talking about eradication?

A: We're not just talking marijuana -- poppies and many other things, fields that have been , you know....

Q: Marijuana and what else?

A: Marijuana mainly, but there's also, there is also some poppy fields that have been planted and they are destroyed as well. Although there is several layers where there's support for law enforcement and not only in the destruction of fields and also of the support that is sometimes needed for, you know, important movements across the nation to tackle the organizations and things of that sort. But these two basic groups also are talking about -- we are talking about several other forms of cooperation. In the case of disasters, it's very important that we also have to train people and also the kind of senior leaders to play the games -- the disaster games -- so that we can have our reactions measured and capacities enhanced so we are talking about those possibilities as well. There are some forms already of cooperation in the Tijuana/San Diego area, which have been effective [inaudible] but we need to expand that to other areas. We have in Mexico, for instance, a very keen interest in fires in woods, and especially tropical woods, and we need training to enhance that capacity and we're talking about those things.

And, also I should mention the legal framework for having the transfer of some equipment to Mexico. Mexico for a long time was very resistant to certain type of transfers because of certain clauses and conditions that were built in the congressional requirements, so to speak, to have this transfer made. So, we have been negotiating one, particularly [open five for five] for the purpose of actually fitting our conditions -- or at least the ones that we are comfortable with -- at the same time fulfilling the American laws, which require certain things, particularly on verification and things of that sort. And, I think we have arrived at the formula and that will make possible this transfers of helicopters particularly, that's one of the main first issues that we have tackled and I think that's an important point to make because it's important to have the legal instruments to work very transparently as to what we do, why we do it, and how far we do it. But basically, this has the general ideas and I don't know if you have something else in mind.

Senior Pentagon Official: Could I add just one or two little things here. We have made some good progress in transparency. There's been a lot of misunderstanding about this program and about what our military does, in the drug area in particular. So, for example, we have just finished some high level visits American officials and senior Mexican military officials to all of the headquarters where we assist the law enforcement agencies with our joint task forces in the counter-drug effort along the border. So, they can see exactly how we do everything there. And, of course, with their officers coming for training and so forth, that helps also.

Second, I wanted to just explain a little bit the relationship between this effort and some of the broader counter-drug efforts and on the one hand, but you know about General McCaffery and his high level contact group. The two of us are also on that group. We have some broader responsibilities. I represent our Defense Department on that group, but of course that group also has Justice, Treasury, State Department from our standpoint, so it's a broad counter-drug group. This is a defense/defense relationship group here, this bilateral working group and just focuses on the defense aspects. So, on the one hand in the drug area, this is just a piece of the drug work and on the other hand there's more to it than just drugs, because we do these other things that he mentioned here that we do with lots of defense ministries around the world. So, those are two clarifications that I wanted to make here.

Q: Can you tell us when do you foresee the transfer of helicopters and does this agreement have any strings attached?

Senior Official of the GOM: That's exactly what the decision was all about: so that they don't have strings attached, that they are, of course, there is one main objective for their uses of this equipment. I mean, otherwise, what would be the point of transferring them. They should be used against narcotics -- in the fight against narcotics. That's perfectly reasonable one. What we mean by "no strings," no overt political strings attached, no particular things that we have to fulfill, you know, in order for them to used for the purpose that they were transferred.

Q: For example, what kind of strings do you object to?

A: Well, there were some form of verification of the uses of equipment that were involved in the actual operations that we are carrying out against drug traffickers, okay? So we have basically taken away the fact that in real and natural operations, there can not be sort of the presence of military and American officials.

Q: Can you tell us where and how many?

A: Let me just rephrase this so that it's clear. The thing is that as in the United States, the "authority" to prosecute these crimes is a Mexican authority. So, in those operations where there is an exercise of authority, there shouldn't any other authority but Mexican. It doesn't mean that there can not be very many some information is going forwards and backwards and logs and many other things can be used to verify.

Q: Do you foresee American pilots?

A: None, ever.

Q: ... flying over Mexican...

A: That's right.

Senior Pentagon Official: Absolutely not. There's no joint operations, never have been any joint operations discussed; there have never been any joint operations planned, don't have any use for joint operations that we can foresee at the moment and no American operations, in fact, you know, inside of Mexico.

Q: So, has the helicopter arrangement been finalized, then?

A: No, it hasn't. I can fill you in on that a little bit here. We are at the stage where we have done -- this is a little bit technical, but we have reached a so-called "505 Agreement," which means that we don't have these end-use restrictions on a case-by-case basis and this is a historic first, because it's made it very hard to do these kinds of things with Mexico in the past. So, that's just been signed in the past few days.

The next step is for us to round up the equipment, put it together in packages and decide which kind of authority we will use to make this transfer. Some of these can probably be transferred as so-called "Excess Defense Articles" for those of you that are experts. Others of them we may have to use some counter-drug draw-down authorities that we have. We're not sure which authorities exactly we'll use. My guess is that we'll do a few, you know, a few of them fairly quickly, okay.

Q: How many is "a few?"

A: Well, we don't have an exact number now, but, you know, teens kinds of numbers, okay. That kinds of numbers we can do fairly quickly to get the project underway and then it will take us a little longer to come up with the final package and get it underway.

Q: By "teens" you mean between 10 and 20 helicopters..."

A: Yes. Correct.

Q: Of what kind? Hueys?

A: Yes, everything that we're talking about now are going to be existing Hueys that are currently used and, of course, as you know, are being drawn-down in the American plans as the Army moves to more Blackhawks and away from the Huey.

Q: Excuse me, there are quite a few motives for [inaudible] are represented?

A: I don't know. I honestly don't know and I think I'll ask my backup guys and I don't think we've -- have we settled?

Unknown speaker 1: [inaudible].

Unknown Speaker 2: One H.

Senior Pentagon Official: Okay.

Q: Is it more for the Cobras or whatever?

A: No, no, no. No Cobras. These are transportation only. Not -- not -- these are not. I'm glad you asked these things because otherwise people get the wrong impression. No, just for transportation.

Q: There's been a lot of talk about -- that in Mexico, for real effective operations, you need more than the Hueys, especially if you're going to go beyond transport or just getting people - the effectiveness of getting people on the ground faster, as the technology that narco traffickers use, also improves.... Was there any discussion about more sophisticated equipment and in the even in the mid-term, not necessarily right now in terms of actually being more effective in the deficiencies that have been publicly discussed both by the Mexican and U.S. authorities about needs to do this, that is radars, improved communications, C3 stuff, also the question about authority about overflights on a case-by-case basis, etc., those kind of operations that would include more sophisticated equipment and cooperation?

A: Let me take those a piece at a time if I could. In terms of actual equipment transfers, we focused on these initial basic items and there has been some talk about some things related to training, like training simulators and so forth and, you know, but nothing really outside that I know of the basic package here at this stage.

We have talked about ways we can assist in communications and sort of systems integration and so forth, but we're at a very early stage of that. We think that's a fruitful area for the future, I think it's fair to say. But we're just kind of organizing that aspect of it because we know that has to be done. The long lead times it seemed to be were to start the training program and begin to figure out some basic equipment needs. We've also looked at some areas where we don't have any capacity on a grant basis to help Mexico, but we can perhaps facilitate them, they have some fighter aircraft, for example, that could use upgrading -- they have an F-5 fleet -- so we've agreed to help facilitate that. We don't have any F-5s in our fleet, so we don't have anything we can grant to them, but we can maybe facilitate their use of these and improvements of these and so we have some technical assistance going in that area as well to try to bring these things together.

The Mexican government has some of its own programs to improve some of its radar. When we look at these broader areas, we may look at the possibility of not putting new radars in, but from the existing systems that we have in the Caribbean, for example, of helping by giving information that might be useful to the Mexicans from our existing systems so that they don't have to spend money on redundant radars, looking at places where we're already looking. But they're going to have to have some of their own to cover certain areas and in any event and they're aware of that and working on that independently.

Q: When you say "facilitate," it means you're going to rent them to sell them to, I mean what's that?

A: Facilitate?

Q: Yes.

A: No, no, no. The way that we...

Q: The helicopters...

A: The helicopters we hope to actually be able to grant the helicopters, grant -- give. Okay. Now, there's more technical questions like what if they repairs, can we grant the repairs? We have to figure that out. What about the spare parts? We have to figure that out, okay? But we do have the helicopters and we have the authority -- we have excess helicopters coming available as we change our mix of forces. So, we believe we can give them the helicopters.

Some of these other things, the Mexican government will have to spend money on and that's why we have this sort of complicated bilateral working group structure, because this stuff gets incredibly technical depending upon exactly what they need and want; and what we might at any one point in time; and what kind of legal authority, so we have to work all of this out.

Q: You don't foresee any kind of reaction from the Senate or from Congress that you're going to grant these helicopters?

A: No, no, no. We have two laws that specifically state... that are passed specifically for support for counter-drug operations. One that deals with excess equipment and one that deals with equipment that's not yet deemed "excess," but that we feel we can, even though it's not excess, we feel that it's in our interest to transfer. So, these laws are on the books. Congress has passed them and this is not controversial. We also have in our authorization, we have the substantial counter-drug budget in the Defense Department for doing this kind of thing. That counter-drug budget is focused on service-type things not equipment but, for example, some of the training and so forth we can provide at our expense under that authority. And, then, finally, other parts of it Mexico will pay for.

Q: Could you give a round...?

A: Let me just -- I'll be happy -- you mean right on this thing?

Q: Yes, I was going to ask you to give an estimate on how much these helicopters will be worth and when do you figure the first ones might be delivered?

Senior Official of the GOM: Actually we haven't finished. It's still in progress. It's very difficult now to assess how many and how much and so on...

Q: When do you figure the first ones might go down?

A: I would think that we can have a -- a very fast pace.

Senior Pentagon Official: A few months. A few months is what we're talking about here to get the first group to the get first.

Q: And how many helicopter total are we talking about?

A: Not -- not to the point. We have an idea. I'm happy to say we have an idea, but we don't feel comfortable we can release it yet. We've got to talk to the Army. We've got to work it out and, you know.

Q: More than -- dozens?

A: Yes. Yes. Dozens, not hundreds, okay? That kind of organization, a few dozens not hundreds okay. That's the kind of numbers we're talking about. Yes?

Q: These will come from the Army, these will be Army excess helicopters?

Senior Pentagon Official I guess that's -- or Guard, Army National Guard -- yes, it could be National Guard.

Senior Pentagon Official 2: -- either Army or National Guard.

Senior Pentagon Official: I think that's where they all are.

Q: Going to Mexican Air Force...?

A: Yes. Mexico Air Force.

Q: Can you confirm that the figure is around 50, which is what was originally discussed?

A: No, I don't want to confirm that figure... but we'll be transparent about this as soon as we get a little bit down-stream. We're not trying to be cute about it, it's just that we haven't quite worked it out.

Q: Again, on you all's objections to the normal restrictions that are put on these, you're telling the U.S. that you will use these in the fight against drugs.

Senior Official of the Government of Mexico: Yes.

Q: What you're saying is that, "We don't want anyone down there checking on us."

A: No, no, no, no. There's many ways to verify. There's many ways to observe and the ways which are proper, according to our views and also that fulfill the Congressional requirement. So, sometimes one gets caught in sort of very formalized ways. We explore ways in which our sensitivities about these things, our sense of where the limits should be work. Work together with the objectives that something should happen in the way it's perfectly proper. If you transfer equipment to be used for the purpose that it should be used and that's the commitment that makes it as well.

Q: Is that all worked out yet or is that to be done?

A: Very much so in the sense that it's bilaterally agreed upon and that's the important part. It's something that we have talked fully.

Q: Was that done at this meeting this week here?

A: No, no, no. It has been the work of lawyers for some time and it's worked here...

Q: Well, we're trying to figure out what's new in this meeting?

Senior Pentagon Official: What's new in the meeting is that it was completed just as the meeting began and this was all reported so, this is a wrap up of all of these things. In other words, we had the working groups doing all of the work in anticipation that they needed to get it done by this meeting because this was when the ministers expected it to be...

Q: [inaudible] for a while?

A: Well, no, [inaudible].

Senior Official of the GOM: The initial negotiation was done. The notes are beginning to be interchanged now at this particular point.

Q: So what is the verification method then? We're talking around it. What are going to do? How is it going to be checked that you're using these in the right way?

Senior Official of GOM: There is many ways, which we have already have talked, that is possible and complete.

Q: You said that some agreement has been reached, at least in principle?

Senior Pentagon Official: Let me see if I can deal with this. The problem is that neither of us is experts on the technical agreement. I believe it's a public document, I don't know for sure, I just checked so, I think, I think if you wanted to plow through it you can plow through it. I think these so-called "505 Agreements" are in fact matters of public record -- maybe they're not, but if they are we can get it. I think the reason we can't tell you exactly the details is because we had our negotiators work this out and we're not the experts on this, but we could perhaps get you some background on it.

Q: We've been discussing here that Mexico has some objections to what the standard procedures were for the so-called "strings attached." You've worked through that and come to some agreement about how all this will be done. Well, how is it going to be done that's different from what's in the law?

Senior Official of the GOM: One thing that's -- perhaps the most important thing for us is to...

Senior Pentagon Official: Nothing is different from what's in the law. That's a -- nothing's normal. I'm sorry to keep interrupting.

Senior Official of the GOM: Oh, no. No.

Senior Pentagon Official: Let me explain. You either have this blanket 505 where you sit down and work out all these things and you say, Okay, the Government of Mexico certifies that this stuff is not going to be used for x, y, and z, okay, whatever it says. And, this is a general thing and then it specifies, in general terms, by which we can gain assurance that this was all done this way or you have to do it case-by-case-by-case, all right. And, what happens -- when you do it case-by-case-by-case -- it gets much more difficult in practice to work it out and it takes a long time each time. So, what the breakthrough is here is getting a blanket agreement, as it's called, which means then when we have a possibility of helping Mexico, all we have to do is do it under this agreement and the exact details in it are, like I say, ____ may be able to tell you a little bit more, but I don't know...

Senior Official of the GOM: Perhaps the only thing I would like to add is that at this particular point, where we have agreed is to bilaterally define the ways of doing it.

Q: You have not defined the ways?

A: No, not for each particular operation, because it's a blank one that will come later.

Q: So, you made an agreement that opens the door for the U.S. to continue to provide assistance, without going through this process over and over?

Senior Pentagon Official: That's exactly right. Let me clarify on this point about the other -- the Congressional interaction. These authorities that we have, these counter-drug authorities, do require congressional notification by the way, so this... everything that we do will be congressionally notified. We don't anticipate problems with Congress, but I don't want to tell you... Congress will do what it does but, what we will be doing will be completely in line with what the intent was of these talks... Just a couple more questions.

Q: Can you give us a little more detail on the planned and on-going training of Mexican officers?

A: There's a couple of aspects of this from our standpoint. One is what we do with our normal -- what we call IMET program as well as some exchanges -- a few of which are outside of IMET in terms of the financing. This is about a million dollars a year which for IMET is pretty large, actually. And so there's going to be next year about -- let me see if I can remember the number was in the 30s or 40s of Mexican officers who will be at American schools under IMET, and then, in addition to that, there's the specialized training that was mentioned before -- that's going on at... already there's some officers currently down at Ft. Bragg?

Q: Pilot training, then?

A: Some of these are pilots. The guys there now are not pilots. The pilots haven't started yet. The guys that are there now are sort of cadre group that will in turn go back and train these other intervention teams.

Q: The million dollars?

A: That's outside the million dollars.

Q: What's the million dollars, tell me again...

A: That's our so-called IMET -- International Military Education and Training that's -- for Mexico for this year and that's general purpose training. So, there you go to Ft. Leavenworth or...

Senior Pentagon Official 2: Like an advanced artillery course or very traditional military classes.

Q: Is that a result of this meeting or is this something that's already been done?

A: Yes, that's the result -- No, we've beefed it up as a result of this process, okay? And what we did in this process -- this meeting today -- was for the first time heard the report of the specific plan for how we'll be able to spend the million dollars on this in an effective way.

Q: The ones at Ft. Bragg that's counter-narcotics, right?

A: That's counter-narcotics. We're spending counter-narcotics money on that and that trains these cadres of guys that will go back and help train a set of teams inside the Mexican military that will be able to provide this kind of assistance.

Q: And, how much was that?

A: I think the total money we're spending on that kind of training is like an order of magnitude it's between $5 and $10 million, I think. On the lower end of that, let's say about $5. So, it's about five times as much as the IMET.

Q: And, how many are at Bragg right now training?

A: Fifteen, I think, yes.

Q: Can I ask how many helicopters the Mexican Air Force now has and...

Senior Official of the Government of Mexico: I'm sorry I wish I could help but I come from the Foreign Affairs secretariat so it's a little bit awkward.

Q: Is the Mexican military overwhelmed with drug trafficking? Do they badly need these helicopters?

A: No, no, no. That's one of the problems we have had is communication on these issues, I mean, on the data. I think one of the important things that has been going on in our bilateral cooperation is the formation of the high-level contact group, which is led by General McCaffery of the United States and [inaudible] our attorney general. And, one of the things that is important that we have reached is also to put our numbers in place to make a diagnostic together. So that we don't hear these numbers and sometimes they sound very awful and that sometimes they are not more than statements of fact. They seem to place guilt, as well. So, we're working on that.

And, so there's many, and so the Air Force... there's a reconstruction of the Air Force of Mexico is now doing against the drug traffickers and its strategy has been unfolding since a few months ago. And, in that strategy this kind of cooperation -- this particular kind of cooperation -- which is to transfer some equipment or the training of some people is important, it's very important. It's very important for the level of, you know, readiness we should have because the problem is big, that's for sure, there's no doubt about it. Now, we believe that there's... in this process of cooperation we can truly make some very big and important strides. I mean, these people are not unbeatable. They are beatable if we, you know, if everybody puts together their forces and their capacities and that's exactly what I think we've doing and the basis of trust, I think.

Q: I'd like to follow-up on Charlie's question and possibly restate it. You're from the Foreign Minister's office and you don't work for the Air Force, but obviously, you talk to each other. You know what equipment is needed to fight the drug problem in Mexico. Are these helicopters desperately needed?

A: I don't think the word "desperate" would be suited to this point. They are needed, yes, they're not desperately needed.

Senior Pentagon Official: Could I risk elaborating this a little bit. The difficulty is that for the military in the Mexican situation, to be effective and they understood this very well, they've got to have faster transportation. They can't get to these places if we get information that we share with them or they get information on their own that there's a flight landed that's off-loading tons of cocaine and they get there, you know, two days later, climbing through jungles, it doesn't do any good. They've got to have air transportation to get to these places for whatever it is they're going to be helpful with and so they definitely needed some better transportation and given that we are in the middle of drawing down these helicopters, these kind of transport helicopters are perfectly adapted to do this kind of stuff, this all worked. We worked together to kind of create this particular program.

Captain Doubleday: In terms of the backgrounder why don't we do two more questions on the backgrounder and then if you've got a little bit of time, sir, we'll let you take a couple on-the-record.

Q: It seems to be an expansion of the role of the military on the so-called war on drugs in Mexico. Things that would be traditionally done by the police forces now are being done by the Army troops or military personnel in Mexico. Are we starting the militarization of the war on drugs, I mean, why can't, you know, these agreements be done directly with PGR and the police forces the ones that are supposed to fight the bad guys?

A: I'm glad you asked that question because I want to be very clear on that. We actually are doing that with the PGR and the Department of Justice and State Department and the Defense Department and many other departments... this is a concerted effort and this is one of the groups of the many others, which are working on this. So, it is by far not true that this has been done only Defense-to-Defense rather than the actually authority that have to be carried on, which is PGR in Mexico and the Justice Department in the Untied States. So, this is our sort of complimentary efforts to help to support the law enforcement people who actually have the authority and the responsibility to get at the problems in this area.

The second thing is that the military have not expanded their role. They are doing exactly the same things they have been doing for the last 25 years. Now, they are doing it better. They are doing it more -- the eradication that has been well for the last 25 or 30 years have been eradicating marijuana fields and what we are doing now is to make it... to keep providing technology and the capacity and the training to do it efficiently, much more efficiently than we have been doing it. Apparently, I remember hearing this from General McCaffery, Mexico has a record on eradication and that's absolutely true. But still it's taking thousands, literally thousands of soldiers to do that, I mean, they walk and walk and walk and walk to get to the place and get it with their bare hands, really. So it's a lot of effort that can be, you know, immediately be reduced if we can add capacity, air mobility technology. That's the point of it in that part.

Now, there's other supports that the Army provides to the PGR and I don't there is anything new about it, but the operations have been wider and much broader even in the north of Mexico. There have been some operations that you have know about, [inaudible] for instance that was, you know, a true mobilization of not only Army and Navy, but also federal police, the roads police, even municipal police, so these kind of things have to be done, have to be done in a very coordinated manner and I think we are improving very much on that possibility. But, we are far away from any military session. And, second, this is only part of the real, you know, of the whole cooperation effort.

Q: Are helicopters and trainers the only kind of equipment that we're talking about? I remember that the PGR had a whole laundry list of equipment that was needed? And, No. 2, you did not answer the question about overflights of territory, the permission for Americans to fly over Mexican air space?

A: Yes, we haven't changed the regime that we are on. We are on the same regime. Second, on the first part of the question, the important issues, this transfers to the Army, to the Air Force, but there's other, as I was saying, cooperation between the PGR and Justice Department and the State Department.

Q: Would you say what kind of equipment we're talking about?

A: Of course, there has been many -- there is a list with night vision equipment and some bullet-proof -- what you call it -- "vests?"

Q: Airplanes? Or things like that?

A: No, we haven't get into hardware level at the PGR point. But, helicopters, yes. But there was a transfer of 12 helicopters and 12 others who are now in Mexico to be used as spare parts for the first 12. So, that we have 25 ongoing helicopters for the PGR directly. So, that transfer has already taken place.

Senior Pentagon Official: Under State Department authority, that was not Defense Department.

Senior Pentagon Official 2: And, that's on top of 30 that were transferred several years ago.

Senior Pentagon Official: Yes, that's right, in '92, that's right.

Q: Now, again that we've touched on the sensitivities on the background could we just ask you both to confirm on the record that you've reached basic agreement to transfer several dozen helicopters to Mexico to the Air Force to fight drugs, basic agreement, I mean, if that's what you told on background why not just say on the record?

Senior Official of the GOM: It hasn't been -- it has been totally formalized. We would like to have the formalization to be done in order to announce it. So, we are talking on this, of course, and we want you to understand what it is exactly that we have been doing, but formally it hasn't been sort of accepted.

Q: When will it be formalized?

A: We haven't talked about that today. We have to -- we have some other meetings to go with and decide on these things too, but what the basic concepts are there.

Q: But you saying a new agreement to do it, you said you expected this to happen in a few months, this is again happening in a few months?

A: I don't understand. I don't understand I'm correctly [inaudible] there's one thing that we have reached agreement is to how to transfer equipment. That's one agreement. Another agreement which we haven't done yet, how many and which particular date in which particular manner. We haven't reached that. We have reached the framework. Now, we have to go each part -- each agreement, each letter over and accept so to speak so that we can put it within a framework.

Q: But you've agreed to do this?

A: Yes.

Q: How many and when?

A*: Here's what I think from my standpoint I'm prepared to say on the record and that is that we reached agreement on the methodology and we have completed the first stages of our plan to do this and to provide some helicopters to Mexico and that we are now working out the details of the program of how to get it done. We hope to be able to do the first ones in a few months but we have not yet completed all the work and we certainly have to go through the Congressional notifications and so forth and until we get through all of that, I'm not in a position to announce that this is a completed transaction or that we have reached some final agreement on either the numbers or exactly when or exactly what the package would be. (* --The preceding remark may be attributed to Jan M. Lodal, Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy.)

Q: As you know there is an international drug conference taking place in Mexico. Today the Columbia police chief has charged that Mexican drug traffickers are building secret airstrips and carving out new sea and land routes for the smuggling of South American cocaine. Can you respond to that? How would you respond?

Senior Official of the GOM: Well, first off the record I want to say a couple of things. One is that I wasn't there I don't know if this was said by General Cerano [ph.] at all. Second, one of the purpose of many of these meetings should be to really get at the data and the information so that everybody can share that information and not to use threats in order to make, you know, assertions that, I mean, it may or may not be true, I don't know.

The third one is that perhaps the single and most portentous that -- the issue is vast in some of these problems of drugs. Is to place it somewhere else than your own field of responsibilities and I think sometimes we all do that mistakenly. I think we all should accept and share of the problem and take it directly and sometimes those types of statement whether they were said or not by General Cerano, I don't know do exactly the kind of thing that we shouldn't be doing it's placing the problem outside. And we all have problems all of the countries have problems of production. All of them. All of them have problems of distribution. All of them have problems of consumption. And, unless we take this seriously, stop, you know, pushing the problem somewhere else, we're not going to make a big head on it. So, that's kind of my personal reactions to that type thing but I've only been able to say that on the record in the sense that I don't know if he said so, I mean, how, you know, what's the basis for that.

Q: This can either be on backgrounder or on the record, hopefully on the record, but can you give an idea of what were some of the Mexican government's requests or demands on -- that were brought to this meeting for the U.S. to cooperate with Mexico on initiatives within the United States? Up until now we've talked about how the effort is going to be help and cooperation to help the efforts in Mexico, was there anything proposed to the U.S. government as to what they need to do and some of the proposals from the Mexican?

A: Not in this group, but I can tell you that in the high level contact group there was a direct discussion on that point, precisely. Not only eradication particular in the production of marijuana in U.S. and also on the methods of consumption and distribution. Sometimes we have focused more on the transportation of drugs one side but the distribution who [inaudible]. There is a lot of discussion on that.

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