By SUSAN FERRISS
 Cox News Service

 MEXICO CITY -- A month before the most bitterly fought presidential election in
 Mexico's recent history, the ruling party is under increasing fire for using federal
 welfare programs to lure or coerce votes for its candidate.

 Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo told farmers last week that subsidies and other
 assistance ``get to where they need to get . . . without intermediaries,
 bureaucrats or political manipulation.''

 His comments seemed designed to quell complaints that some bureaucrats are
 threatening to withhold subsidies to the poor unless recipients pledge to vote for
 Mexico's 71-year-old Institutional Revolutionary Party, the PRI, on July 2.

 In contrast to Zedillo's speech, however, a top campaign advisor to the PRI's
 candidate -- Francisco Labastida -- bluntly said in a national magazine last week
 that the PRI is ``at war'' and will use those programs to fight to keep power.

 ``Yes, federal social programs are carried out by the PRI, and their aim is to win
 the presidency,'' said veteran PRI politician Manuel Bartlett, who joined
 Labastida's campaign shortly after it was widely perceived that Labastida had lost
 a nationally televised debate in April. ``We have no reason to deny it,'' Bartlett told
 Milenio magazine. ``We are at war and if [public employees] are PRI
 sympathizers, they should defend the party.''

 Bartlett, a former Puebla state governor, ran unsuccessfully against Labastida in
 a PRI primary election last year. He is considered an old-fashioned PRI
 strongman. Although Bartlett denies it, he is widely suspected of using his
 position as a cabinet member in charge of elections in 1988 to engineer fraud on
 behalf of the PRI's then-presidential candidate.

 The PRI, which has controlled Mexico's presidency for seven decades, has a
 history of doling out gifts of food and building supplies to the poor before
 elections.

 This year's race comes in the wake of democratic reforms to make elections fairer
 and cleaner. But opposition parties say they are still concerned about PRI
 activists in remote areas attempting to coerce votes by threatening to cut
 government social programs.