Mexico president rules out new 'war on drugs'

Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum on Tuesday ruled out launching a new war against drug cartels, as she presented a national security plan aimed at reducing raging criminal violence.

Sheinbaum, the first woman to lead the Latin American nation, said her government would prioritize tackling the root causes of crime, as well as making better use of intelligence.

"The war on drugs will not return," the leftist president told a news conference, referring to an offensive launched in 2006 involving the military and supported by the United States.

Since then, a spiral of criminal violence has left more than 450,000 people dead and tens of thousands missing.

Sheinbaum, a former Mexico City mayor who was sworn in on October 1, pledged to stick to her predecessor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's "hugs not bullets" strategy of using social policy to address the causes of crime.

"We are not looking for extrajudicial executions, which is what was happening before. What are we going to use? Prevention, attention to the causes, intelligence and presence" of authorities, she said.

While Lopez Obrador prioritized prevention over force, he controversially put the National Guard under the control of the armed forces.

Critics said the move marked another step toward the militarization of the country -- a claim that both Lopez Obrador and his ally Sheinbaum have denied.

"There are families that today do not have access to reliable municipal police or to a fully strengthened state police force. That's where the National Guard will play an important role," Sheinbaum's public security minister, Omar Garcia Harfuch, said.

Sheinbaum outlined her strategy amid shock over the murder and reported beheading on Sunday of Alejandro Arco, mayor of the capital of the violent southern state of Guerrero.

Meanwhile, in the northwestern cartel stronghold of Sinaloa, bloodshed blamed on gang infighting has left more than 150 people dead in a month, while violence has spiked in Guanajuato and Chiapas states.