Mexican election raises fears in Washington

Mexican election raises fears in Washington

The frontrunner in Mexico’s presidential election has promised to bring down the death toll in his country’s bloody drug war, prompting American fears he may step back from directly confronting the cartels.

By Raf Sanchez, Washington
4:37PM BST 29 Jun 2012

Mexico’s 80 million voters will go to the polls on Sunday to elect a new president for the first time since the military was deployed against the drug barons six years ago, beginning a bloody conflict that has already cost 50,000 lives.

Enrique Peña Nieto, a telegenic former governor who enjoys a commanding 14-point lead, has vowed to shift the focus away from disrupting the cartels’ smuggling operations and look instead to curb the violence that all too often ends in beheadings or with bodies hung publicly from bridges.

“This doesn’t mean that we don’t pay attention to other crimes, or that we don’t fight drug trafficking, but the central theme at this time is diminishing violence in the country,” he told the Associated Press.

He has promised to gradually withdraw the roughly 40,000 soldiers deployed across the country, replacing them with a national gendarmerie tasked with bringing down violent crime.

More:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/mexico/9365421/Mexican-election-raises-fears-in-Washington.html