MEXICAN CALLS RULING PARTY LAX ON DRUGS

MEXICO CITY - The leading opposition contender for the Mexican presidency
accused the ruling party of being soft on drug trafficking and said
narcotics barons would never be brought to justice without a change of
government.

"It's very naive to think that a president of the republic belonging to the
Institutional Revolutionary Party will sort out drug trafficking," said
Vicente Fox, a candidate of the conservative National Action Party. "This
has not happened for 70 years, and it is not going to happen. Therefore we
need a new government and new leadership."

Fox is shown by many polls to be closing the gap with the Institutional
Revolutionary Party candidate, Francisco Labastida, in the election July 2.

In one of the most aggressive attacks he has mounted against the
government's record on fighting drug trafficking, Fox accused members of
the Institutional Revolutionary Party, known by its Spanish acronym PRI, of
being in league with the drug bosses.

"They have been part of the problem, they have negotiated with the narcos
... and many PRI members have been jailed for being narcos," he said.

The PRI has ruled Mexico for 71 years but faces the stiffest challenge yet
to its long rule in the July election.

Labastida, a former governor of the northwest state of Sinaloa, where drug
trafficking is rampant, has vowed to break the drug cartels.

Mexican cartels, based in northern border towns, now control many of the
drugs flowing into the United States.

Mario Villanueva, the former PRI governor of the state of Quintana Roo,
home of the Cancun resort, is sought by investigators for allegedly
enriching himself through links to drug traffickers.

Last month, the chief of police of Tijuana, a city on the US border that is
a major transit point for drug shipments, was shot to death in a contract
killing thought to have been connected with drug gangs.

Fox said that the government was fooling the United States into thinking it
was getting tough on the drug lords. He said the government's attitude was
making a mockery of an annual US assessment of efforts by Mexico and other
countries to combat drug trafficking, a ritual known as "certification."

"This is just making a fool of the United States, and this certification
business is no use at all," Fox said. "Each time certification comes round,
the Mexican government arrests two or three drugs bosses and puts them in
jail and acts as if it's getting serious with drug trafficking."

Fox said that if he won the presidency, he wanted to work closely with the
United States.

The Mexican government maintains that it is cracking down on trafficking
and stepping up a campaign to seize shipments of cocaine and marijuana.

Last year, a new federal police force, made up mainly of trained soldiers,
was established to spearhead the fight against organized crime.