Mexico's president-elect pledges straight talk with U.S.

MEXICO CITY - Mexico's president-elect acknowledged Tuesday that both Mexican and U.S. border and immigration policies have been flawed, and promised new, straight talk.

Opposition leader Vicente Fox, who won Sunday's presidential elections, also laid out sweeping plans for a new justice system, a more human rights-oriented foreign policy and a multiparty Cabinet.

He pledged to eliminate the posturing and tension in U.S.-Mexico relations over the two countries' border, where immigration-related incidents have sometimes broken into violence in recent months.

''This situation isn't solving our problems for either of us,'' Fox told a news conference in Mexico City. ''It appears to me that both of us have lost sight of the goal, because the United States' goal has been to put up walls, police and soldiers to stop immigration. That can't work.''

''Mexico's goal has been to open the escape valve, avoid its own responsibility to create jobs here, allow 350,000 young people to cross the border each year, and wash its hands of responsibility,'' he added.

Instead, Fox proposed a long-range plan for development in Mexico - with the help of local and foreign funding - while gradually opening the border. He said he would make fighting poverty his first priority.

He added that he would try to advance the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement to cover labor and small businesses.

Fox also pledged to continue Mexico's position of staying close to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries while opposing sharp increases in crude oil prices.

He announced plans to travel soon to Washington for talks with President Clinton, and said ''the goal is to become true partners, true neighbors, and true friends.''

Fox also promised changes in Mexico's foreign policy of strictly opposing intervention - even by international organizations - in other countries' domestic conflicts.

''We can't just limit ourselves to unrestricted respect for other countries' decisions, without denouncing rights abuses or major crimes,'' Fox said.

One of Mexico's strongest policy differences with the United States has been over relations with Cuba. Fox said he would maintain Mexico's ''intense relations with Cuba, and intensify them if possible.''

He said he would invite Fidel Castro to his Dec. 1 inauguration. But Fox stressed that he wanted Cuba ''to move toward democracy.''

On drug trafficking, he called on the U.S. government to abandon the ''certification'' of other countries' anti-drug efforts and instead join in a regional anti-narcotics organization - an idea Fox said he had already discussed with Colombia. ''We can check on each other,'' he said.

Mexico had earlier rejected a Panamanian proposal for a type of hemispheric anti-drug center.

Fox said he wanted to split police away from the prosecutors' offices that currently run them. But he said he would not name a civilian to the Defense Secretariat, asking: ''Why should we break a tradition that has brought stability to the country?''

Fox reiterated an offer to start talks with leftist Zapatista rebels in the southern state of Chiapas, and said he would consider withdrawing army troops from pro-rebel areas once such talks were started.

He said he would treat his own National Action Party less as an instrument of government than ''a strict and severe judge'' of his own actions, and suggested that the country's congress should audit the executive branch.

Fox moved to avoid friction by promising to keep most government employees in their jobs, replacing only Cabinet secretaries and most undersecretaries.

''The next two months will be the key,'' as he puts together a cabinet that he hopes will include parties other than his own, Fox said.

He said he was surprised by the ''rapidness, stability and peace'' with which Mexico was emerging from 71 years of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, but added, ''I'm knocking on wood.''