Mexico Offered 'Friendship'

By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service

MEXICO CITY, April 17 -- An amiable and subdued Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), who has a reputation here for Mexico-bashing, said today he was visiting the country
to "extend a hand in friendship" as he ducked questions about Mexico's relations with communist Cuba.

"We believe there is no end to what we can accomplish if we work together as friends and neighbors," said the 79-year-old chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, offering only warm words for his old target at a news conference with other senators accompanying him on a three-day visit here.

Helms, one of Cuba's most vocal foes in the U.S. Congress, chose not to answer questions about Mexico's decision to abstain on a U.N. vote Wednesday in Geneva on
a measure condemning Fidel Castro's human rights record.

Mexico's long tradition of supporting Cuba on human rights votes has been a chief source of friction between Washington and Mexico City, and many here expected
Helms to press the issue with President Vicente Fox when the two met Monday night. But accounts of the meeting suggested he took a low-key approach.

"Helms has been so far out there on this that he can accomplish more with his silence than the rest of us can with our words," one of the senators accompanying Helms
said privately. "It did not go unnoticed by the Mexican government that Helms was saying with his presence here, 'We know you're trying, keep it up.' "

Today Helms said only, "Stay tuned," promising that he would say more Wednesday when the senators meet with their counterparts on the Foreign Relations Committee
of the Mexican Senate.

At the news conference, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) said the Cuba issue had come up in meetings with Fox, Foreign Minister Jorge G. Castaneda and others.
Biden said that while the United States and Mexico still disagree on Cuba policy, the senators sensed an "incremental and important change" in Mexico's approach to
Cuba under Fox.

"There is a recognition of the human rights abuses that do exist in Cuba, without a commitment of voting with us on Cuba," Biden said, adding that Mexico's new "frank
acknowledgment" of abuses in Cuba signaled "at the minimum a change in tone" that the senators found encouraging.

Helms, Biden and Sens. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) and Lincoln D. Chafee (R-R.I.) each stressed today a new emphasis on expanding relations recently dominated by drug
issues into areas such as sharing water and electricity.

Biden said he sensed hope for "resolution to the tensions that exist" over immigration. He cited a vastly increased U.S. Hispanic population as helping to focus
Washington's attention on immigration and other issues important to Mexico.

"We are each other's problem in a sense, but we are also each other's solution," Biden said.

                                                © 2001