MEXICO. . . THE POLITICS OF ASSASSINATION

An official probe of the September 28 murder of the Mexican ruling party's No. 2 man claims to have unearthed evidence of conspiracy among elected officials resistant to reforms. Late yesterday, the Attorney General's office in Mexico City announced that a congressional aide accused his boss, fugitive Congressman Manuel Munoz Rocha, of having plotted the killing of Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) Secretary-General Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu "by orders of the group" to which Rocha belonged. The news, a rumor for days before it broke, has rocked Mexican political establishment: the aide's confession also suggests the existence of a death list of other progressive PRI officials.