(Trying to picture him in a sombrero...it's not quite working... :)

Saturday April 14 2:33 PM ET
Jesse Helms Visit to Mexico Signals New Opening

By Susan Schneider

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The Mexican Senate's foreign relations panel is to host the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee starting on Monday, a meeting that analysts say signals a further warming in the sometimes cool relations between the two neighbors.

The U.S. committee headed by Sen. Jesse Helms, the conservative North Carolina Republican, is scheduled to arrive in the Mexican capital on Monday for a three-day visit that will also include talks with President Vicente Fox and Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda, government officials said.

Helms, 79, said he believed it was the first time that a committee of the U.S. Congress had scheduled a joint meeting on foreign soil with a committee of another nation's legislature.

Analysts said the real significance was that it presented an opportunity for Mexican and U.S. lawmakers to ease the rancor over issues such as immigration and drug trafficking.

``They (Mexican legislators) see a general opening,'' which should help to tone down their sharp criticisms of U.S. policy, said analyst Jeffrey Weldon of Mexico City's ITAM University.

Mexico and the United States are linked under the North American Free Trade Agreement. But the economic ties have not prevented the two from squaring off over illegal drugs and undocumented immigrants flowing across the shared 2,100-mile border.

Mexico is the main transit route for Colombian cocaine bound for the United States, and some 1.5 million Mexicans are arrested each year trying to cross the border.

Certification A Sore Point

The U.S. government has tightened border controls and instituted an annual drug ``certification'' process by which Washington determines if nations including Mexico are doing enough to combat drug trafficking.

Mexico views certification -- which can result in economic sanctions -- as demeaning and a breach of its sovereignty.

The arrival of new presidents in Mexico and the United States in the past four months has put relations on a smoother path. President Bush made Mexico his first official foreign stop in an effort to signal a new emphasis on hemispheric alliances.

The visit by Helms -- a supporter of certification and a vocal critic of corruption in Mexico -- underscored that the new openness extended beyond the U.S. executive branch, analysts said.

``It shows that the U.S. Congress recognizes that there is a change with the PRI out of office ... that there's proof of pluralism and alternation of power,'' Weldon said.

Fox's victory last year ended 71 years of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). The rancher and former Coca-Cola executive, a member of the National Action Party, took office in December.

The specifics of the U.S.-Mexican meetings were still not known on Saturday, but Mexican legislative officials said the two sides would tackle -- in ``general terms'' -- topics spanning trade, immigration and drug trafficking.

With Fox pushing to gain recognition and even amnesties for Mexican workers in the United States, Mexican lawmakers could look to make that case with Helms and the Senate Foreign Relations panel.

Lawmakers may also broach the topic of ending the U.S. certification process in exchange for other measures to evaluate progress in the war on drugs.

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