By Douglas Farah
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, March 13, 1995; Page A01

MEXICO CITY, MARCH 12 -- Former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari, blamed by his successor for much of Mexico's economic crisis, left the country this weekend, a government official confirmed tonight after newspapers here reported the departure. One paper said he had gone into "gilded exile" in the United States.

The official said that Salinas -- who was once highly popular here and widely praised abroad for his economic policies -- left Saturday in a private jet accompanied by his wife and three children. He declined to identify Salinas's destination, but the newspaper Excelsior said the former president planned to spend this week in New York and Boston and that his longer-term plans were to settle for an undetermined period in Boston, where he received a PhD in economics from Harvard University.

Two other publications -- La Jornada, a leading opposition newspaper, and Proceso, a weekly magazine that came out today -- said Salinas had reached an agreement with President Ernesto Zedillo to leave the country with his family, but a spokesman for Zedillo refused to comment on Salinas's reported departure or the circumstances surrounding it.

In a nationally broadcast speech tonight, Zedillo himself made no mention of Salinas's whereabouts but again attacked his predecessor's handling of the Mexican economy during a six-year term that ended in December.

Salinas had made clear for some time that he hoped to leave Mexico and had campaigned to head the new World Trade Organization; he lost that bid, however, when the Mexican economy tumbled into chaos soon after he left office.

The U.S. government had initially backed his candidacy for the trade post -- referring to him as the architect of the North American Free Trade Agreement -- and last week U.S. officials responded to rumors that the ex-president might take up residence north of the border by declaring he would be welcome.

In Washington today, a State Department spokesman said that "we don't know if in fact Carlos Salinas is in the United States. . . . He is a private citizen, and we are unaware of any impediments to {his} traveling to the United States." The Reuter news service quoted State Department officials as saying that Salinas presumably had a tourist visa dating from years ago but that they could not immediately confirm this.

In his speech tonight, Zedillo defended as "painful but transitory" an economic austerity program announced last week that is designed to arrest surging inflation and a sharp drop in the exchange value of the peso. He said that the economic crisis, "which exploded in December, is the result of imbalances built up over several years" -- a reference to Salinas's tenure. He also promised to continue a drive to root out official corruption and to see that justice is done in several high-profile political killings that have wracked the nation.

In a break with decades of political protocol here, Zedillo, who was handpicked by Salinas, has repeatedly attacked Salinas's economic policies in recent months. Last week, he also sanctioned the arrest of Salinas's brother, Raul, who is charged with plotting the Sept. 28 assassination of Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu, a leader of the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

Ex-presidents here usually have been accorded immunity for their actions in office and normally retire to lives of luxury. The Zedillo-Salinas feud has broken unwritten rules that long allowed former presidents to live in peace in return for not meddling in the new government. That agreement is part of what has enabled the PRI to hold the presidency uninterrupted for 66 years.

After Raul Salinas was arrested, his brother began a short-lived hunger strike, demanding that the government stop blaming him for the nation's economic woes. Carlos Salinas also demanded that the government declare he had done nothing to obstruct the investigation into another assassination, last year's killing of PRI presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio -- whose place on the ticket was taken by Zedillo.

The prosecutor general's office has cleared Carlos Salinas in the Colosio case, and the government has diminished its criticism of the former president. Nevertheless, polls here indicate that most people blame Salinas for the economic crisis and that he has become one of the most unpopular former presidents of all time.

Zedillo said in his broadcast tonight that without the new austerity measures "we risked a collapse of finances and productivity that would have paralyzed jobs and services. That collapse would have meant losing millions of jobs, and it would have meant canceling the prospects for advancement for an entire generation of Mexicans."

The measures, hailed by foreign investors and the United States, include raising gasoline prices 35 percent, increasing the national value-added tax from 10 percent to 15 percent and cutting government spending by 10 percent. Since Dec. 20, when Zedillo announced a devaluation of the peso, the value of the national currency has dropped from 3.45 pesos to the dollar to a high last week of 8 to 1. After the austerity measures were announced, the pesos rebounded to about 6.7 to 1.

Zedillo said that the economic pain of individual Mexicans would be transitory, with the heaviest impact in the next few months, and that improvement would begin in the second half of the year. He also promised that government would try to create jobs in the poorest sections of the country and would maintain basic food subsidies.

But Zedillo said that true development could not come without the rule of law -- a slap at his predecessor and the old guard of the PRI. "The nation has been badly damaged by cases of impunity resulting from the abuse of power, misuse of authority and corruption," Zedillo said. "Our duty is to apply the law to everyone without exception."

"We are fulfilling our promise not to rest until justice has been done in the cases of the brutal assassinations of noteworthy political figures in our country," Zedillo said. "No one and nothing will stop me in my decision to lead the building of the true rule of law Mexicans deserve."