DRUG VIOLENCE THREATENS MEXICO'S TOURISM INDUSTRY

ACAPULCO, Mexico (AP) -- Brazen daylight killings by presumed drug
smugglers just up the hill from Acapulco Bay are worrying business leaders
that increasingly bloody drug wars will cripple Mexico's critical tourism
industry.

Hotel owners and other business leaders in the Pacific coast resort have
demanded officials do something to quell the violence that has been closing
in on the city's beachfront hotels, flashy discos and fish taco eateries.

One of the boldest attacks yet happened Tuesday, when assassins dressed as
soldiers barged into two state police stations shortly before noon,
demanded the officers hand over their guns and then opened fire. Five
police investigators and two secretaries were killed.

Federal authorities said Wednesday they were investigating whether some of
the slain officers had ties to drug traffickers, and whether the killings
were meant to settle scores between the rival Gulf and Sinaloa drug cartels.

One of the stations was near a highway used by tourists driving into the
resort. The attacks came only days after two Canadian tourists were grazed
in the legs by bullets after a gunman opened fire in an Acapulco hotel lobby.

A city of more than 720,000, Acapulco has always had a problem with crime,
but until recently the violence occurred mostly in the poor neighborhoods
blanketing its verdant hills, far from the gleaming five-star hotels along
the coast.

Since last April, however, the attacks have become more blatant: The
smugglers have carried out at least six beheadings, with the head of one
victim rolling up near an Acapulco beach and the decapitated body of
another found in a hotel room in Pie de la Cuesta, a low-budget beach
resort popular with foreigners just outside the city.

In addition, a former state attorney general was killed ina drive-by
shooting outside a famous Acapulco hotel, while assailants also gunned down
a municipal polivr officer outside a disco in the tourist zone.

The violence - attributed to a stepped-up battle between Sinaloa and Gulf
cartels for control of the port city's lucrative sea routes for U.S.-bound
Colombian cocaine - has threatened the city's image as a relaxing,
tropical paradise. With violence hitting one of the top resorts, many
Mexicans worry for the nation's nearly US$12 billion (euro10 billion)
foreign tourism industry.

Cartels also have begun battling over growing domestic market for drugs
consumption increases in Mexico.

President Felipe Calderon's administration said the drug cartels are
responding to his military crackdown.

Since taking office in December, Calderon has ordered the extradition to
the U.S. of four drug lords, including drug kingpin Osiel Cardenas, to stop
them from running their cartels from behind bars.

He also has deployed more than 24,000 soldiers and federal police
nationwide to fight drug gangs, including about 7,000 sent to the Acapulco
region.

In Tijuana last month, federal troops stripped city police officers of
their guns for inspection amid allegations that some were colluding with
drug smugglers.

Erit Montufar, director-general's investigative police officers in
Guerrero, where Acapulco is located, said the assailants acted as if they
were soldiers carrying out a similar operation Tuesday to get officers to
handover their weapons before killing them. All the assailants escaped and
no arrests have been made.

Viviana Macias, the federal attorney general's spokeswoman, said her office
was probing whether the slain officers had been working with smugglers.