CALDERON DRAWS FIRE OVER NOMINEE FOR ATTORNEY GENERAL

MEXICO CITY -- President Felipe Calderon plans to replace one of
Mexico's top officials in the war on drugs with a controversial
former prosecutor who critics say did little during his years in
office to solve the killings of hundreds of women in Ciudad Juarez
during the 1990s.

Calderon nominated Arturo Chavez to serve as the nation's attorney
general, but opponents denounced the move. They said that when Chavez
served as prosecutor in the border state of Chihuahua, he was accused
of bungling cases and failing to make significant arrests in the
string of gruesome killings of women that continue to garner
international attention.

"I consider him one of the most incompetent choices," said Jaime
Hervella, a human rights advocate in Ciudad Juarez.

Esther Chavez Cano, founder of a rape crisis center in Juarez and a
leading voice for the hundreds of women who were killed or went
missing, told El Norte newspaper, "This is bad news; it doesn't take
us anywhere, it's not the solution to the problem." She questioned
why Calderon would pick someone who had failed in Juarez before to
now confront the surging drug violence there.

More than 1,500 people have been killed in Ciudad Juarez this year,
as cartel members and local drug gangs fight for control of street
corners and lucrative smuggling routes into the billion-dollar U.S.
market. With Juarez's homicide rate reaching 130 killings per 100,000
residents, Mexico's Citizens' Council for Public Security and Justice
recently named it the most violent city in the world. A week ago, 18
recovering drug addicts were lined up against a wall and executed at
a treatment center.

Chavez's nomination needs the approval of the Mexican Senate;
Calderon's National Action Party lost control of the chamber in this
summer's midterm elections. In his announcement, Calderon praised
Chavez's "wide experience in law and specifically in combating
organized crime."

With Calderon's fight against the drug cartels raging across Mexico,
the resignation of Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora on Monday
signals a shake-up in the crime-fighting leadership of the cabinet.

Medina Mora was viewed as a close ally by Washington and, with his
custom-made suits and fluent English, served as Mexico's public face
in the evolving partnership between the Obama and Calderon
governments. U.S. diplomats heaped praise on Medina Mora, saying he
helped foster greater cooperation between Washington and Mexico City.

The relationship between Mexican and U.S. law enforcement agencies is
undergoing profound change, with $1.4 billion in aid flowing to
Mexico and U.S. agents and advisers helping Mexico to confront
endemic corruption and reform its police, judiciary and intelligence-gathering.

But there have been continued setbacks. One member of Medina Mora's
inner circle, Noe Ramirez Mandujano, who led organized-crime
investigations, was arrested last year and charged with peddling
sensitive information to the Sinaloa cartel for $450,000.

In Arizona on Friday, a former top supervisor for U.S. Immigration
and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was arrested and charged with passing
classified information to an unnamed Mexican drug cartel. Richard
Padilla Cramer was the ICE resident agent in charge at the Nogales
port of entry in Arizona until 2004, when he took up duties as the
ICE attache in Guadalajara until retirement in 2007.

According to the criminal complaint, Cramer used his position to
search government databases to find out whether any members of the
cartel were federal informants. If found out, such informants are
usually executed or their family members kidnapped. Cramer is also
charged with personally investing in a plot to smuggle 300 kilograms
of cocaine from Panama to Spain.