Mexico's Calderón asks Washington to seek illegal-drug-use alternatives

Mexican President Felipe Calderón has called on the United States to take stronger action to curtail the demand for illegal drugs, suggesting that their legalization would help curtail the rampant violence that is plaguing his country. In his strongest public plea to Washington yet, Calderón said Mexico is paying the price for America's hunger for cocaine, heroin and marijuana.

"We are living in the same building, and our neighbor is the largest consumer of drugs in the world. Everybody wants to sell him drugs through our doors and our windows," he said in an address in New York, where he will attend the UN General Assembly annual meeting this week.

"We must do everything to reduce demand for drugs," the Mexican leader added. "But if the consumption of drugs cannot be limited, then decision-makers must seek more solutions - including market alternatives - in order to reduce the astronomical earnings of criminal organizations."

Calderón's remarks come after recent weeks of surging violence blamed on the drug cartels. Police on Saturday found the body of a missing Mexican congressman from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) by the side of a highway in Guerrero state. The lawmaker, Moises Villanueva de la Cruz, went missing after he attended a party on September 4 in the town of Tlapa de Comonfort. Authorities also found the body of his driver.

PRI officials have demanded a swift investigation.

Also in Guerrero, police reported Monday that three teachers were gunned down by armed men. Earlier this month, hundreds of schools in the state had to be closed because of threats made by hitmen, according to the state teachers union.

Last month, Mexico sustained one of its biggest attacks by a drug cartel when 52 people died after hitmen working for the notorious Zeta drug gang set fire to a packed Monterrey casino. Dozens more were injured. The attack was apparent revenge against the casino's owners. Seven people have so far been arrested, including a police officer who began to cooperate with the investigation. On Friday, authorities said that three of the jailed officer's family members were shot dead in retaliation for his cooperation with investigators.

On Monday, Mexican poet Javier Sicilia, who has become a national spokesman for a growing anti-violence movement, completed a 10-day march with thousands of supporters from the Mexican border with Guatemala to Mexico City. The so-called Caravan for Peace was organized to demand that the Mexican government take drastic measures to end the drug-related violence as well as to stop police from committing human rights abuses.

"Tell the men who bring death and the corrupt governments, who are soused in the mud they have mixed from the earth and water of this country, that we outnumber them, and that our dignity, born from the pain of our dead loved ones, our missing family members, is keeping alive the flame of this country that they want to extinguish and the peace they have torn apart," said Sicilia, whose son was killed along with six other people in March by a narcotics gang.

Since Calderón took office in December 2006, more than 40,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence.

Rampant crime, fueled by the cartels' continued grip on Mexico's northern states, has sunk Calderón's National Action Party (PAN) in the polls ahead of next July's presidential elections.

On Monday, PRI frontrunner Enrique Peña Nieto, a former Mexico state governor, formally announced that he will run for president. The PRI, which governed for more than 70 years before being defeated by the PAN's Vicente Fox in 2000, leads the polls and seems poised for a comeback.