CANDIDATES IN FAVOR OF DRUG LEGALIZATION ATTACKED IN MEXICO

MEXICO CITY -- A small leftist party in favor of legalizing drugs said
Monday that four of its congressional candidates have been attacked
while campaigning ahead of Mexico's July 5 midterm elections.

The latest incident took place Sunday, when a campaign worker was hurt
by glass shards after unknown assailants fired on candidate Emmanuel
Lopez's vehicle in Acapulco, Social Democratic Party chairman Jose
Carlos Diaz Cuervo said at a press conference.

"He's out of danger," the PSD chief said of the injured man. "However,
it seems to us unacceptable, requiring of public outcry, that these
attacks continue."

Last Friday, Diaz said, a Molotov cocktail was hurled at PSD hopeful
Celina del Carmen Avalos in Tijuana, an incident that followed attacks
on two of the party's candidates in the central state of Mexico.

The assaults have "a clear intention to intimidate us ... something we
interpret as a sign we are doing well, disturbing precisely the
interests that have this country prostrate before organized crime,"
the PSD chairman said.

All four cases have been reported to police in the respective
jurisdictions, Diaz said.

"It's time authorities said something about this. These acts of
violence cannot be allowed to pass as campaign anecdotes," he said.

Asked whether he thought Mexico's powerful drug cartels could be
behind the assaults, PSD deputy chairman Luciano Pascoe said the
party, which currently has only five members in the 500-seat lower
house and none in the Mexican Senate, had no evidence to support that
theory.

"What we are beginning to find is that they (the attacks) are directed
against the party, against the proposals, and this speaks of a
political profile," Pascoe said. "What they won't achieve with bullets
is to silence us."

Diaz was more explicit.

"Doubtless, unlike the federal government, it appears the drug
traffickers do understand that the regulation of that market would
take the business away from them and would be a more intelligent way
to combat them," he said.

Mexico has been plagued in recent years by drug-related violence, with
powerful cartels battling each other and the security forces, as rival
gangs vie for control of lucrative smuggling and distribution routes.

Gunmen working for the cartels murdered around 1,500 people in 2006
and 2,700 people in 2007, with the 2008 death toll soaring to more
than 6,000.

Some 2,500 people have died so far this year.

Since taking office in December 2006, right-wing President Felipe
Calderon has deployed more than 45,000 soldiers and 20,000 federal
police officers across Mexico in a bid to tame the violence, yet the
pace of killings has only accelerated. EFE