Next President of Mexico unlikely to be a US puppet

knightridder: Front-runner signals he'll return Mexico to tradition foreign policy

Tens of thousands of Mexicans filled an ancient square in this capital Sunday to hear leftist presidential front-runner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador pledge to distance himself from U.S. policies.

While not naming the United States or the Bush administration, Lopez Obrador, a fiery former mayor of Mexico City, made it clear that he would return Mexico to its traditional foreign policy of non-intervention in the affairs of its neighbors.

Conservative President Vicente Fox broke that tradition after taking office in 2000 when he joined the United States in condemning the lack of fundamental liberties in Cuba and elsewhere. Like U.S. foreign policy, Mexico's under Fox sought to promote human rights and civil liberties abroad. [db: Is Knight Ridder having a laugh, because that sure is funny]

That'll change, Lopez Obrador signaled to a crowd estimated between 70,000 and 120,000. Having led public opinion polls for two years, Lopez Obrador is on track to become Mexico's first president elected from a left-wing party, the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).

"We're not going to meddle in the internal life of other peoples and other governments, because we don't want them meddling in ours," Lopez Obrador told a sea of supporters in the Zocalo, the city square that Spanish conquistadors built atop Aztec ruins.

That was a slap at the close relations between Fox and President Bush, and Lopez Obrador added that "the next president of Mexico is not going to be the puppet of any foreign government." Read more