MEXICO TARGETS POLICE CORRUPTION IN DRUG WAR

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The new Mexican government is moving fast to stamp
out police corruption as part of its war on drugs and wants to extradite
key drug suspects to the United States, the country's attorney general said
on Friday.

Rafael Macedo de la Concha said widespread corruption and impunity crippled
Mexico's fight against drug trafficking in the past, but that President
Vicente Fox, who took office last December, was determined to clean up the
security forces.

The government's great dream was to end corruption, but it would take a
long time to establish whether it had been brought under control, Macedo said.

"The great reality is that we are working intensely," he said in a meeting
with foreign correspondents in Mexico City. "We are advancing, but there is
much to be done."

Macedo, a former army general, said the government wanted to extradite more
suspects to face trial in the United States.

He said Everardo "Kitty" Paez, an alleged gunman for the Tijuana drug
cartel led by the Arellano Felix brothers, could be extradited "very soon."

Corruption inside Mexico's federal police force and army has undermined
repeated attempts at greater cooperation with U.S. authorities in the
campaign against the drug cartels.

But Fox, whose election ended 71 years of rule by the Institutional
Revolutionary Party, has pledged to work closely with the U.S. government,
and Mexican police have made a string of arrests of prominent alleged
traffickers in recent weeks.

During a visit to Washington on Thursday, Fox announced the arrest of Adan
Amezcua, dubbed along with his two brothers as Mexico's "kings of
amphetamines" and accused of smuggling huge quantities of synthetic drugs
into the United States.