MEXICAN ASSASSINATION PLOT NEARS THE TOP

Police this afternoon arrested Raul Salinas de Gortari, brother of former Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, in connection with the assassination last September of the ruling PRI party's No. 2 official. The stunning twist in one of the country's several unsolved political crimes increased speculation that two potential Mexican presidents -- one a candidate, and one a popular reformer -- had been killed in a clandestine party feud. It was unclear whether Raul Salinas would be charged with the murder of the PRI official, Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu; the Mexican attorney general's office scheduled an evening news conference to discuss the case. (Investigators recently had arrested a second suspected gunman in the other major killing -- the March, 1994, killing of PRI's presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio.) Earlier today, Ruiz Massieu's own brother, former deputy attorney general Mario Ruiz Massieu, demanded tougher government action to solve a crime he blamed on high-level PRI figures.