RUMORS RISING OF DRUG CARTEL CEASEFIRE

MONTERREY, Mexico -- The bullets still fly and the bodies pile up in
disputed cartel turf in Mexico.

But a sudden downturn in narco-executions near the Texas border is
fueling speculation in recent weeks that Mexico's warring drug cartels
have agreed to a truce.

Mexican officials deny there was a "narco summit," but a U.S. federal
law enforcer familiar with cartel movements said capos from the Gulf
and Sinaloa drug-trafficking syndicates have agreed to peacefully
divide some northeastern and central Mexican states.

"That's why you don't see as much chaos," said the official, on
condition of anonymity.

Compared to May, when police regularly were targeted and nationwide
body counts topped 90 per week, Mexico's drug war has cooled off.

But peace hasn't broken out nationwide.

Weekly death tolls remain in the mid-40s, only slightly lower than the
2007 average of more than 50 per week, according to the Grupo Reforma
newspaper chain.

Some 1,400 people died at the hands of organized criminals in the
first half of this year, well on pace to top the record 2,000 killings
of 2006.

"We're not seeing a substantive decline in the violence," said Erubiel
Tirado, the professor in charge of a national security program at the
Iberoamerican University in Mexico City.

While remarkably efficient at getting narcotics to their
multibillion-dollar American market, Mexico's cartels struggle with
internal rifts as well as enemy gangs, experts said.

"For that simple fact, it's very difficult to think of a meeting in
the style of 'The Godfather,'" said Tirado, who doubts talk of a
cartel truce.

Rumored details of the ceasefire between cartels are sketchy and
differ depending on the source.

News magazine Proceso reported last week that leaders from the Gulf
and Sinaloa cartels met in early June in the border state of Tamaulipas.

The U.S. law enforcer said a series of meetings occurred in central
Zacatecas state and Mexico City, where they agreed to share Michoacan
state, in western Mexico, and the border state of Nuevo Leon, where
Monterrey is the capital.

The Zetas, the armed wing of the Gulf Cartel, will retain control over
the border states of Tamaulipas and Coahuila, said the official, and
Sinaloa will have Chihuahua, Sonora and Durango.

President Felipe Calderon has deployed thousands of troops to cartel
turf war hot spots since taking office in December. National security
experts questioned the use of troops, who have been accused of
shooting innocent travelers at highway checkpoints.

But military operations have interrupted cartel activity. Scaling back
the violence might be the most pragmatic way to avoid too much
attention from authorities, said Javier Oliva, a security expert at
the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

"Drug trafficking needs social peace," he said. "If there's violence,
there's more vigilance (from authorities)."

Edgardo Buscaglia, an expert on international organized crime and law
at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, said talk of an
alleged truce was not surprising.

"It's very compatible with what happens elsewhere," he said, adding
that there will always be some violence "no matter how many meetings
they have."

Lulls in the violence have happened before.

The last narco slayings in 2006 in Monterrey claimed five lives,
including the death of a woman on a passing bus, in a single shootout
in late November. The next organized crime-related slaying in the city
didn't happen until the second week of January, kicking off a record
80-plus slayings so far this year that include deaths of a state
legislator and more than 20 law enforcers.

As of Monday, three weeks have passed without a slaying.

"We've had many days now without executions," Gov. Natividad Gonzalez
Paras told reporters last week. "But the evil is not eradicated. It's
still there and at any moment the struggle between cartels could resurge."

Staff Writer Mariano Castillo contributed to this report from Laredo.