MEXICO GOVERNOR CALLS FOR NEW FOCUS IN DRUGS WAR

Mexico needs to refocus its war on drugs away from enforcement and
concentrate instead on fighting money-laundering and tackling the
causes of violence, a leading opposition politician who is widely
tipped to win the country's 2012 presidential elections said.

More than 30,000 people have died since President Felipe Calderon
launched an army-led offensive on Mexico's drug cartels four years
ago, an approach that has led to growing criticism at home.

Writing for the Financial Times' emerging markets website,
beyondbrics, Enrique Pena Nieto, governor of the state of Mexico, said
the country needed to find ways to prevent violence from occurring in
the first place.

Mexico must "implement a National Strategy to Reduce Violence with one
clear aim: to bring down the number of murders, kidnappings and
extortions significantly", said Mr Pena Nieto, whose charisma and
movie star looks have made him a rising star in the country's
once-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

Although yet to formally put himself forward as a candidate, recent
newspaper polls show that 44-year-old Mr Pena Nieto is far and away
the leading choice for the presidential nomination of his party, which
ruled the country for several decades before it was defeated in 2000.

He is also streets ahead of any potential contender from the ruling
National Action party (PAN).

Mr Pena Nieto said Mexico needed to improve its education system via
higher government spending, which would boost students' chances in job
markets; increase levels of formal employment via a social security
reform, which would reduce the size of the cash-based informal
economy; and modernise the country's judiciary and police forces.

"The current administration has started to do this, but much more is
required," he added.

Ironically, while Mr Pena Nieto's approach is very similar to Mr
Calderon's original drugs strategy, some of the president's
initiatives, such as a bill to rationalise Mexico's dispersed police
forces into more effective and consolidated units, have got bogged
down by the opposition in Congress.

Strikingly, Mr Pena Nieto made no reference to the possibility of
legalising drugs, nor did he criticise the US for being the leading
supplier of assault weapons to the drug cartels.

Mr Pena Nieto's life was dramatically touched by drug violence in 2007
when his three children were on holiday in Veracruz and four of their
bodyguards were shot dead.

Shortly before, Mr Pena Nieto became a widower when his wife, Monica
Pretelini, died of a heart condition.

He recently married Angelica Rivera, a top Mexican soap opera star.