MEXICO ATTORNEY GENERAL: WE DON'T NEED U.S. TROOPS TO INTERVENE IN DRUG WAR

WASHINGTON -- Mexico's attorney general said Tuesday he sees no need
for U.S. troops to intervene in his country's war on drug cartels,
nor to gear up for a spillover of violence across the border.

"I don't see that," Attorney General Eduardo Medina-Mora said in an
interview with The Dallas Morning News. "I don't see the U.S.
military playing an active role. The size of the problem on the U.S.
side is not calling for that, and certainly Mexico has enough
institutional capabilities to deal with this."

U.S. officials view the violence as a potential national security
threat, and last month the Bush administration's homeland security
chief, Michael Chertoff, said Washington has drawn up contingency
plans for a "surge" of both civilian law enforcement and military
assets along the border.

Texas also has developed a contingency plan to cope with spillover
violence. On Tuesday, Gov. Rick Perry demanded a tighter security net
from Washington, saying he's asked the Obama administration for more
aircraft and "a thousand more troops" to the border.

"I don't care whether they're military troops, or they're National
Guard troops or whether they're customs agents," he said during a
visit to El Paso with retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, the former U.S.
drug czar who warned two months ago that Mexico could soon become a
"narco state."

"I'm concerned," Perry said in an interview, calling the city
directly across the border from El Paso, Ciudad Juarez, "one of the
deadliest cities on the North American continent. ... Darn tootin' it
concerns us."

The drug violence has cost more than 6,000 lives in the past 13
months, as drug gangs fight for territory and trafficking routes and
battle a Mexican army crackdown. Juarez, a city of 1.3 million, has
had almost a third of the killings.

Last Friday, the city's police chief resigned after gunmen killed one
of his officers and a jail guard. Three days earlier, his top deputy
and three other officers were killed, and gangs had threatened to
shoot a policeman every 48 hours until the chief quit.

Medina-Mora, over coffee at Mexico's Embassy a few blocks from the
White House, said there is little hope of eradicating the drug trade
or ending the violence entirely.

"This is beyond our means and our capability" as long as demand for
narcotics persists, he said. Rather, the goal is to regain
"normality" for Mexican citizens.

"This means fragmenting and diminishing the power that these criminal
groups have accumulated throughout the years, and transform it from a
national security problem ...to a police problem, to a public
security problem," he said.

Criminals account for nine out of 10 casualties, Medina-Mora said.
Most of the others are police, though a few innocent bystanders have
been killed. Beheadings of rival gang members have grown more common,
and police corruption is widespread.

"The police forces of Tijuana and Juarez were in a way privatized by
these criminal groups," he said. "It's no accident that violence is
very high in those areas, where the local police force was not
precisely sound, and to rebuild those forces is difficult."

He said the violence can also be attributed to the success of
Mexico's aggressive use of Federal Police and army units to disrupt
the drug trade. New U.S. figures show that the street price of
cocaine has more than doubled since Mexican President Felipe Calderon
took office at the end of 2006 and began the crackdown.

"We have been successful in dismantling their criminal
infrastructure, building up obstacles for them to produce income,"
Medina-Mora said.

The "unwanted" effects of the war on the drug trade, he asserted,
will ultimately lead to an easing of violence.

"I think that this is foreseeable in the near future." he said. "...
Criminal groups that are active in this activity are in the process
of breakdown."

Last week in Paris, Economy Secretary Gerardo Ruiz Mateos said that
if Calderon had not taken on the cartels, "the next president of the
republic would be a narco-trafficker."

Medina-Mora disagreed, but added: "I certainly believe that there was
no choice for President Calderon but to address this in a very bold
manner. The challenge from these groups to institutions, particularly
local police forces, was already too big."

He called it natural that the residents of Juarez remain frustrated
with the escalating violence. But the lawlessness in border regions
doesn't mean the Mexican state is failing, as some critics assert.

"Mexico has never been a weak state. It is not today. It will not be
in the future," he said. "We do have a critical problem that needs
very bold, determined action by the government, which is taking place."

Medina-Mora said Mexicans remain frustrated with the flow of cash and
guns from the U.S. drug trade -- $10 billion a year and thousands of
weapons, which are illegal in Mexico. He discussed that topic Monday
with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and on Tuesday with
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

"These groups easily get into their hands assault rifles and weapons
that are coming from the U.S.," he said, adding that although Mexico
respects the rights of Americans under the U.S. Constitution, "the
Second Amendment was never meant to arm foreign criminal groups."