Mexico smuggler plotted to kill Calderon: police

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico has captured a drug smuggler believed to have been plotting to assassinate President Felipe Calderon in revenge for the army's crackdown on trafficking, a senior police official said on Monday.

Dimas Diaz, a mid-ranking member of the Sinaloa cartel in northwestern Mexico, was arrested on Sunday in the Sinaloa state capital of Culiacan with four other traffickers, said Ramon Pequeno, head of the federal police's anti-drug wing.

"Government intelligence reports led us to find out the threat was from the Sinaloa cartel, with Dimas Diaz entrusted with the details of a possible attack," he told reporters.

Pequeno said police started investigating the purported plot last year.

Calderon and his family have received death threats since he launched his drug war in December 2006.

The president has sent thousands of troops to crush drug gangs, which have become a huge barrier to Mexico's development and a serious threat to national security.

But escalating clashes between rival cartels and security forces have left more than 13,000 people dead since late 2006, scaring off tourists and investors just as Mexico suffers a deep economic recession.

Calderon, holding talks with U.S. President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in western Mexico, said he had no specific details of any plan to attack him but brushed off drug gang threats.

"It's not the first time and it won't be the last that there is talk about an attempt on my life," he told reporters.

"What the criminals basically want is for the authorities to stop. They know we are destroying their criminal structures, we are hitting the heart of their business, we are pushing them back. In this fight they will not intimidate nor stop us."

Pequeno said the plot against Calderon was in revenge for a series of big seizures of cocaine and cash last year.

Calderon's forces have captured some major traffickers. But top barons, including Mexico's most-wanted man, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman of the Sinaloa cartel, remain at large.

July was the deadliest month of the drug war to date, with 850 deaths across Mexico. The death toll so far this year is around 4,000, a third higher than the same period in 2008, despite a brief lull earlier in the year.

(Reporting by Miguel Angel Gutierrez; Editing by Xavier Briand)