MEXICO CITY, Oct 10 (Reuters) – The frontrunner to be Mexico’s next president on Monday pledged to crack down on monopolies, boost the country’s tax take and overhaul state-owned oil monopoly Pemex if he wins a 2012 election.

Outlining his economic priorities for the first time, Enrique Pena Nieto promised to maintain macro-economic stability, double spending on infrastructure and face down the challenge posed by India and China to Mexican firms.

The telegenic Pena Nieto, whose term as governor of the State of Mexico ended last month, is expected to run in 2012 for the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ruled Mexico for seven decades until it lost power in 2000.

The 45-year-old has a commanding lead over potential rivals for the July 1 vote, with a voter survey last week by pollster GCE giving him the support of nearly half the country, twice the level of his nearest rival.

The economy, which is recovering from the financial crisis more slowly than its Latin American peers, is expected to be a major campaign issue, alongside security, with unemployment at xx percent, still significantly above pre-crisis levels.

Unveiling a 10-point economic program, Pena Nieto said Mexico needed to redefine its approach to battling monopolies and seek to make the private sector more competitive.

“Only in countries that promote competition is there innovation, allowing the population to enjoy more and better quality goods and services, at better prices,” he said in a televised address in the northern city of Chihuahua.

MEXICO CITY, Oct 3 (Reuters) – A mounting drugs war death toll, deadlock in Congress and fears of a U.S. economic slowdown are clouding the outlook for Mexico ahead of a presidential election next July.

DRUGS WAR

Anger is growing about the roughly 42,000 lives that have been lost since President Felipe Calderon launched a war on drug cartels in late 2006, and violence has spun out of control in large areas along the U.S.-Mexico border. [ID:nN15124805]

There are now signs it is moving further to the south. On Sept. 20, hooded men dumped 35 bodies on a busy highway in the eastern port city of Veracruz, which had been largely spared from drug war violence until recent months. [ID:nS1E78J283]

A banner beside the bodies said the killings were aimed at the brutal Zetas drug gang, which is fighting a vicious battle with its former employer, the Gulf Cartel, to control the local drugs market as well as lucrative smuggling routes.

The Zetas were blamed for killing three users of social media last month, dumping the headless body of one frequent contributor to a community chat room at a busy intersection in the border town of Nuevo Laredo. [ID:nS1E78P13I]

The violence continues to weigh on support for Calderon’s conservative National Action Party, and it trails in early polls ahead of the presidential election on July 1, 2012.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Rich nations are failing to do enough to compensate Ecuador for not tapping billions of dollars worth of oil from the biologically diverse Yasuni jungle reserve, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa said on Friday.

Ecuador launched its Yasuni project last year to protect the area’s rich flora and fauna, seeking some $3.6 billion in donations by 2024 from developed nations and foundations for leaving an estimated 846 million barrels of oil in the ground.

The OPEC member had set itself the target of collecting $100 million by the end of 2011 to test the water for the plan, which ecologists have hailed as a bold step against global warming.

But so far Ecuador has received pledges worth just over $52 million, and it will review the viability of the project in December, Correa told Reuters.

In a trip to New York that included stops at the United Nations and Columbia University, Correa urged Western countries to help the South American nation take a stand on conserving areas of natural beauty.

“The international response to our call has been poor,” he said. “We’re renouncing an immense sum of money. For us the most financially lucrative option is to extract the gasoline.”

In a country where more than one in three people live below the poverty line, the government could not afford to sacrifice valuable resources, Correa said.

NEW YORK, Sept 21 (Reuters) – Peru’s central bank governor, Julio Velarde, said on Wednesday he does not see a need to change current interest rate policies despite the global economic slowdown.

“There is no need to act now, it might change if the situation deteriorates,” Velarde told journalists when asked if he saw the need to change interest rates due to the global economic slowdown.

Last week Velarde said the benchmark interest rate for Peru, the world’s No. 2 copper producer, would likely follow a “downward path,” suggesting the central bank could cut the rate, currently at 4.25 percent, after holding it steady for four consecutive months.

Finance Minister Luis Castilla indicated in the same briefing that if monetary policies, globally, continue to ease, there would be a likely impact on Peru’s currency, the sol, as a result of capital inflows attracted by the country’s relatively high interest rates.

Castilla, however, said Peru was prepared to combat any global economic downturn.

“We definitely would implement aggressive effective and temporary expansionary fiscal policy if conditions were to get worse” Castilla said.

Velarde, for his part, reiterated the central bank’s economic forecast for gross domestic product growth of 6.3 percent for 2011, tapering to 5.7 percent in 2012 before rebounding to 6.3 percent in 2013. (Reporting by Manuela Badawy and Dave Graham in New York; Writing by Daniel Bases; Editing by Leslie Adler)

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The Palestinian foreign minister said on Tuesday he was confident most U.N. Security Council members would endorse Palestinian statehood but the United States underscored its pledge to veto the move despite the risk of diplomatic fallout.

Diplomats still hope to avert the political crisis looming over this year’s meeting of the U.N. General Assembly, but Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki said he thought at least nine of the 15 members of the Security Council would back the Palestinian bid.

“We’re working towards it and I think we’ll manage it,” Malki told reporters. “We hope the United States will revise its position and be on the side of the majority of nations or countries who want to support the Palestinian right to have self determination and independence.”

A veto by the United States, one of the five permanent members of the council and a firm ally of Israel, would still block approval even if most other members agree — something that is far from certain.

But securing the nine votes necessary to claim a Security Council majority would allow the Palestinians to highlight the U.S. veto as an obstacle, increasing the diplomatic risks for Washington during a period of unprecedented political turmoil in the Middle East.

It would also raise the pressure on Israel, which has offered direct peace talks with the Palestinians but has not made any of the concessions that the Palestinians say would make such talks possible.

The White House vowed again to block any Palestinian move at the Security Council, saying President Barack Obama would use his speech to the General Assembly on Wednesday to lay out his view that Palestinian statehood can only be achieved through direct negotiations with Israel.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The Palestinian foreign minister said on Tuesday he was confident the U.N. Security Council would vote to recognize Palestinian statehood and urged the United States to reconsider its veto threat as efforts to resolve the impasse appeared deadlocked.

As diplomats scrambled to contain a political crisis looming over this year’s meeting of the U.N. General Assembly, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki said he believed at least nine of the 15 members of the Security Council would endorse the Palestinian move.

“We’re working toward it and I think we’ll manage it,” al-Malki told reporters after meeting his Venezuelan counterpart.

“We hope the United States will revise its position and be on the side of the majority of nations or countries who want to support the Palestinian right to have self determination and independence,” Malki said.

A veto by the United States, one of the five permanent members of the council and a firm ally of Israel, would still block approval even if most other members agree.

But securing the nine votes necessary to claim a Security Council majority would allow the Palestinians to highlight that the U.S. veto is an obstacle, a public relations coup that carries real diplomatic risks for Washington during a period of unprecedented political turmoil in the Middle East.

“I would expect … that there would be large demonstrations again around Arab capitals in the context of the Arab Spring,” said Marwan Muasher, a former Jordanian foreign minister and now vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Monday turned up pressure on the United States to curb demand for illicit drugs, hinting that legalization of narcotics may be needed to weaken the drug cartels.

Mexico, which has been racked by a bloody conflict between the government and drug cartels, is paying the price for its proximity to the United States, Calderon said in a speech to the Americas Society and Council of the Americas in New York.

“We are living in the same building. And our neighbour is the largest consumer of drugs in the world. And everybody wants to sell him drugs through our doors and our windows,” he said.

“We must do everything to reduce demand for drugs,” Calderon 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.”

He did not go into more detail, but the remarks appeared to be a softening of Calderon’s attitude towards state regulation of the market for drugs, which could curb the power of the cartels by taking away their profits.

Sixteen U.S. states and the District of Columbia have allowed the use of medical marijuana but the federal government does not recognise their authority to do so and considers the dispensaries illegal.

Marijuana is becoming the drug of choice among young adults in the United States and the use of methamphetamines and cocaine is waning, according to a recent national survey.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – If looks alone decided Mexican presidential elections, front-runner Enrique Pena Nieto could take the next nine months off and win at a stroll.

Regularly voted Mexico’s most handsome politician, Pena Nieto has no clear policy agenda and rarely talks about his plans, prompting accusations he is all show and no substance: a “meringue” cooked up by the media, as one opponent put it.

But with impeccable political connections and a huge lead in opinion polls, the election next July is already Pena Nieto’s to lose.

Always immaculately turned out with his black hair parted neatly on the left, the youthful State of Mexico governor carries the hopes of a faction that ruled Mexico for decades until it was ousted in 2000: the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

The 45-year-old’s term as governor will end on Thursday, turning up public scrutiny over his presidential ambitions and exposing him to the full force of attacks by opponents.

Pena Nieto has yet to formally declare his candidacy, but the PRI has already created a massive support base for him.

Although the PRI was widely reviled as authoritarian and corrupt by the time its 71-year-rule ended, Pena Nieto has tapped into growing disenchantment over the two conservative governments that have ruled Mexico since 2000, targeting their failure to establish order and tackle rampant inequality.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Friday mounted a forceful defense of his crackdown on drug cartels, saying the conflict that has cost thousands of lives was the only way to beat the “cancer” attacking Mexico.

Calderon is under growing pressure to end the violence that has killed more than 42,000 people in less than five years, and he devoted nearly half of his annual state of the nation address to rebuffing critics of his army-backed offensive.

In an impassioned speech a week after 52 people died in an arson attack on a Monterrey casino by suspected drug gang members, Calderon said only by standing up to criminals could Mexico end what he called the “slavery of criminality.”

“The only way to really put an end to this cancer is to persevere with this strategy,” he said in his address that lasted 1-1/2 hours. “We will defeat them.”

“If we had done nothing … the country would be completely dominated by the cartels, crime would have grown to the extent that the institutions of state would have ceased to work, putting them at their disposal.”

The surge in violence under his presidency has rattled foreign investors and hurt support for his conservative National Action Party (PAN), which faces an uphill struggle to secure re-election in a presidential vote next July.

Calderon said he had ordered a review of all casinos, which analysts say have become targets for extortion by drug gangs. This could lead to the closure of some gaming halls.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – A mounting drugs war death toll among ordinary civilians, political inertia and fears of a U.S. economic slowdown are clouding the outlook for Mexico ahead of a presidential election next July.

DRUGS WAR

Anger is growing about the 42,000 lives that have been lost since President Felipe Calderon launched a war on drug cartels in late 2006, and violence has spun out of control in large areas along the U.S.-Mexico border.

In late August, at least 52 people died in an arson attack on an up-market casino in Monterrey, a prosperous northern city where Calderon’s conservative National Action Party, or PAN, has traditionally had strong support.

Unlike most of the drug war casualties to date, many of the victims were middle class voters of the kind the PAN relies on. It looks increasingly likely the violence may cost the party dear at the next presidential election on July 1, 2012.

The PAN was trounced by the main opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in an election in the central State of Mexico on July 3, suffering its worst result there in a generation.

No official candidates have been selected by Mexico’s three main parties for the election, but the field of hopefuls is narrowing. Polls continue to show Enrique Pena Nieto, the outgoing PRI governor in the State of Mexico, as front runner.