AP: Mexican president rejects ‘failed state' label

By TRACI CARL

The Associated Press

MEXICO CITY - President Felipe Calderon on Thursday rejected U.S. concerns that Mexico is losing control of its territory to drug cartels and allowing violence to spiral out of control.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Calderon said Mexico is making progress in its war against the cartels. He said he hopes to withdraw the army and turn the fight over to local police before he leaves office in 2012.

"To say that Mexico is a failed state is absolutely false," Calderon said. "I have not lost any part - any single part- of the Mexican territory."

The "failed state" concern has been a major topic of discussion since the U.S. military raised it in a Nov. 25 report on potential global security risks. The report singled out Mexico and Pakistan as countries whose governments are at risk of a "rapid and sudden collapse."

Earlier Thursday, federal Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora told the AP that more than 1,000 people have been killed in drug violence in the first eight weeks of this year. He said that 6,290 people were killed last year, the most specific government accounting yet of drug killings that doubled the 2007 toll.

Calderon also expressed optimism that President Barack Obama will improve relations in the region.

"President Barack Obama has a tremendous opportunity to recover the leadership of the U.S.," he said. "Latin American leaders were inspired by him as part of the new leftist revolution."

He said he knows Obama is committed to immigration reform, but said the best thing he can do is "solve the country's economic problems."

Calderon also said Mexico will win the war on drugs, despite many difficulties along the way.

"Yes, we will win and of course there will be many problems meanwhile," he said.

Medina Mora applauded cross-border efforts that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said culminated this week with the arrests of 755 Sinaloa cartel members and seizure of $59 million in criminal proceeds in the United States.

But both the president and his top prosecutor want the U.S. to do more: Calderon wants a corruption purge to eliminate U.S. customs and border guards he said allow drugs to pass into U.S. territory. Medina Mora would like more U.S. prosecutions of people who reinforce the cartels by sending illegal weapons and drug profits south.

Mexico has spent $6.5 billion over the last two years in this fight, on top of its normal public security budget, but that falls short of the $10 billion Mexican drug gangs bring in annually, Medina Mora said.

Medina Mora said the cartels are "melting down" under pressure from turf wars and the national crackdown, but he doesn't expect Mexico to stop them altogether. The goal is to make smuggling so difficult that they no longer use Mexico as their conduit to the United States.

"We want to raise the opportunity cost of our country as a route of choice," he said.

Medina also boldly predicted that Mexico is "reaching the peak" of this violence, but added that the government won't achieve its objective "until Mexican citizens feel they have achieved tranquility."

Even as he spoke, five more suspected drug killings were announced by authorities in the Pacific coast state of Guerrero. The men were shot Wednesday night.

Killings in Tijuana are down sharply from last year, but they have spiked in Ciudad Juarez. The city of 1.3 million across from El Paso, Texas, is now the most worrisome of a number of hotspots, Medina Mora said.

"But this is not reflecting the power of these groups," he said. "It is reflecting how they are melting down."

About 90 percent of the dead were suspected drug traffickers, and most of the rest were police and soldiers, Medina Mora said. Innocents caught in the crossfire account for about 4 percent of the toll, he estimated.

Calderon said half of the victims were killed in Chihuahua, Sinaloa and Baja California.

Medina Mora also said that since the crackdown began in 2006, the price of cocaine has shot up by 100 percent in the United States, while its purity has dropped by 35 percent. And he said the government crippled Mexico's methamphetamine trade by banning precursor chemicals.

"The raw material is not here anymore" he said.

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