By TIM WEINER

MEXICO CITY, March 17 — Torture, a tool used in Mexico for centuries, must now end, says the new president, Vicente Fox. But his advisers say it
will require radical changes in the justice system, from lowly patrolmen to the high courts.

For the first time, Mr. Fox has acknowledged that police officers and soldiers use torture to extract confessions from subjects. Judges accept confessions
wrung through torture; they are legally admissible in court. In fact, they are often the only evidence brought against suspects by police officers who lack
investigative skills but possess the power to beat people into signing statements.

The United States appears to have played a supporting role. Mexican police and security forces bought more than $15 million worth of American-made
shock batons, stun guns, straitjackets, shackles and similar equipment from January 1997 through February 2000, say Commerce Department statistics
obtained by Amnesty International.

While the Commerce Department has approved export licenses for those tools, the State Department reports that the police in Mexico "regularly obtain
information through torture."

Now Mr. Fox says Mexico will "eradicate torture forever." He has appointed a special ambassador on human rights, Mariclaire Acosta, whose portfolio
includes stamping out the practice.

But "torture is very frequent," Ms. Acosta said. "A confession is the most important source of evidence in the investigation of a crime. How do you produce a
confession? Unfortunately, through torture."

Mexico's laws, like those of the United States, prohibit cruel and unusual punishment. "And yet it continues," she said. Ending the practice, she said, will
require "enormous political will."

"The eradication of torture requires an overhaul of the justice system," she said. "It's not a matter of passing laws but changing the nature of criminal
investigations" and judicial standards. Under present procedures, a victim of torture, confronted with a false confession extracted through force, has to
convince a judge that he was beaten or half-drowned, often weeks or months after the fact.

"The judge says there is no evidence," Ms. Acosta said, "and yet the people were tortured with beatings, immersion in water, electric shock, prolonged
periods without water and food. And all this, of course, happens in situations where people are held incommunicado."

Pierre Sané, the secretary general of Amnesty International, met with President Fox and other top Mexican officials this week, and he said in an interview that
Mr. Fox's admission was a significant first step.

"The climate is different," in Mexico, under Mr. Fox, the first opposition politician to take power in Mexico in seven decades, Mr. Sané said.

"If everyone from the chief of the armed forces to the smallest police precinct hears the president say, `We need to stop torture,' that has an effect," he added.
"But it needs to be followed by concrete actions."

He called on Mr. Fox to free three men whom Amnesty International regards as "prisoners of conscience": an Army brigadier general, José Francisco
Gallardo, and two peasant farmers, Rodolfo Montiel and Teodoro Cabrera.

General Gallardo was arrested in November 1993 on charges of slandering the armed forces by criticizing abuses against civilians. The charges were
dismissed a year later, yet he remains in prison. Mr. Montiel and Mr. Cabrera protested wildcat logging by local political bosses, and were imprisoned in May
1999 on dubious gun and drugs charges, despite official findings that they were arbitrarily detained, then tortured.

What these and other human- rights cases in Mexico have in common, Mr. Sané said, is impunity — the fact that officials can break the law in the name of the
law, and get away with it. "Very seldom do you see officers prosecuted for torture" or other crimes, he said.

This, Amnesty said in its latest report in Mexico, explains "the profound lack of faith of most Mexicans in their country's administration of justice." Mr. Fox has
promised to renew that faith, but his own aides say he must tear down a corrupt labyrinth before building a new foundation of law.