DRUG KILLINGS SOAR AS OBAMA HEADS TO THREE AMIGOS MEETING

U.S. Must Do More To Fight Drug War, Mexico Says

Mexican drug gangs are killing rivals in record numbers in a major
setback for the government, which will seek more support from U.S.
President Barack Obama when he visits the country this weekend.

Severed heads, burned bodies, daylight shootouts and dead children
are daily fare from Mexico's Caribbean coast to its desert border
with the United States, even as army generals pour soldiers and elite
police onto city streets.

Last month was the deadliest of President Felipe Calderon's nearly
three-year army assault on powerful cartels across Mexico with 850
deaths, according to media tallies.

The death rate so far this year stands at around 4,000, about a third
higher than in the same period in 2008 despite a brief lull earlier
in the year.

Mexico has managed to disrupt cocaine supplies and make some major
arrests, but top barons are still at large and more than 13,000
people have died in drug violence since Calderon took office in December 2006.

"We're in a very decisive, very intense phase. There is no quick
solution," said Hector Garcia, the top federal prosecutor in
Chihuahua state, which borders Texas and is home to more than a third
of the killings in Mexico this year.

U.S. anti-drug aid is slow in coming and the drugs war is scaring off
foreign investment just as Mexico suffers a deep economic recession.

Police found nine tortured bodies in two blood-smeared SUVs in Ciudad
Juarez Wednesday. Most residents in the city once famed for its
nightlife are too scared to go out and swarms of U.S. tourists no
longer cross the border to go to local bars.

"This is an unprecedented situation but I don't believe our
operations are a failure," Garcia told Reuters in the border city,
Mexico's deadliest front in the drug war, where 10,000 troops and
police have been unable to stop tit-for-tat killings.

Obama pledged full support to Calderon in the drug war during a visit
in April but Mexico complains that U.S. anti-drug equipment and
training promised by the Bush administration in a $1.4 billion plan
is taking too long.

At the "Three Amigos" summit this weekend in Guadalajara, Calderon is
likely to ask Obama about the possible delay of $100 million in
anti-narcotics aid after a senior Democratic senator said this week
that Mexico has not met human rights requirements needed for the
money to be released.