[Source: Reforma, Feb. 13-16]

MEXICO IS UNDER ENORMOUS PRESSURE ON IRAQ WAR.

President Vicente Fox has emphasized that Mexico
-- currently a member of
the Security Council -- believes only the UN could authorize war,
and they prefer a peaceful solution.

But how they will vote, remains a battleground.

The U.S. Embassy in Mexico City organized
a videoconference Feb. 13 for former Defense Department official
Kenneth Pollack, in which he threatened, that while the
US-Mexican relationship is important, the Bush Administration
would "want to punish any country which does not want to go along
with us, as a way of saying to other countries: `if you don't
cooperate with the US in its most important matter, you will pay
a price.'|" Mexico is vulnerable, and Al-Qaeda could hit there, Pollack added.

The next day, Rumsfeld underling, Jack Crouch (Deputy
Defense Secretary for International Security Policy) used an
interview with Mexico's {Reforma} daily to pitch the need for
improved Mexican-U.S. cooperation in fighting "terrorism."

Praising the creation of the Northern Command, Crouch stressed
that North America should be viewed as "a geostrategic whole."

Mexico's National Federation of Chambers of Commerce
(Concanaco) issued a cowardly statement Feb. 12, pleading that
Mexico support the U.S. war, for economic reasons.

What will Mexico do? Said President Fox's spokesman Rodolfo
Elizondo on Feb. 16: "Mexico doesn't want to risk too much, but
we don't want it to seem that we are aligned with the U.S.... We must be careful."