US President Barack Obama has denied that rising drug violence made Mexico look increasingly like Colombia at the height of its drugs war.
'Mexico is vast and progressive democracy, with a growing economy, and as a result you cannot compare what is happening in Mexico with what happened in Colombia 20 years ago.'
The US leader's remarks appeared a day after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had remarked at a foreign policy think-tank in Washington, that cartels operating in Mexico and Central America were starting to look like an 'insurgency'.
Mrs Clinton had said that narco-traffickers control certain parts of the country,' and that Colombia has spent decades battling leftist rebels financed by a lucrative cocaine trade.
At the height of Colombian violence in the 1980s and 1990s, the South American country was gripped by attacks on political figures and civilians.
While violence has waned in Colombia, Mexican cartels have grown in power in recent years as they took over much of the drug trade from Colombians, analysts and officials say.
More than 28,000 people have been killed since President Felipe Calderon took office in late 2006, but the Mexican government says a spike in violence reflected cartels' vulnerability.
Homicides in the northern state of Nuevo Leon, home to Mexico's most violent drug war city, Ciudad Juarez, dropped to 44 in August from 107 in July due to government security operations, senior Mexican official Alejandro Poire told a news conference.
