Pubdate: Mon, 14 Jun 2010
Source: New York Times (NY)
Page: A13
Copyright: 2010 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Marc Lacey
Cited: The presidential Website http://www.presidencia.gob.mx/
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/Mexico
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Felipe+Calderon

DESPITE KILLING, MEXICAN BACKS DRUG POLICY

MEXICO CITY -- Faced with a surge in drug-related killings in recent 
days, President Felipe Calderon on Monday offered a spirited defense 
of his government's antidrug offensive.

On Thursday night and Friday morning, attacks between rival drug 
trafficking organizations left 85 people dead in states across 
Mexico, according to newspaper tallies, making it the bloodiest 
24-hour period in Mr. Calderon's three-year-old presidency.

Mr. Calderon responded with his most extensive defense of his 
administration's drug war, a 5,000-word missive published on the 
presidential Web site and in local newspapers that shifted some blame 
for violence to previous administrations and to the United States and 
insisted that backing down was not an option.

"If we remain with our arms crossed, we will remain in the hands of 
organized crime, we will always live in fear, our children will not 
have a future, violence will increase and we'll lose our freedom," 
Mr. Calderon wrote.

On Monday, as television and radio commentators analyzed the 
president's statement, authorities announced another bad day, with 10 
federal police officers killed and more than a dozen others wounded 
in a clash with traffickers in Zitacuaro, a town in the central state 
of Michoacan. The gunmen, some of whom died as well, used buses to 
close off major highways and obstruct reinforcements by the 
authorities, an increasingly common tactic employed by Mexico's drug cartels.

In another episode on Monday, 28 inmates were killed and 3 guards 
were wounded in an uprising led by detained traffickers in a prison 
in Mazatlan, in the Pacific state of Sinaloa, authorities said.

The president, elected in 2006 to a six-year term, also condemned the 
huge demand for drugs and the easy availability of guns in the United States.

"It is as though we have a neighbor next door who is the biggest 
addict in the world, with the added fact that everyone wants to sell 
drugs through our house," Mr. Calderon said.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake