Mexico says pipeline bombs helped drug gangs

By Catherine Bremer

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A left-wing guerrilla group that bombed fuel pipelines last week has indirectly helped Mexico's drug cartels by diverting police and army resources away from combating trafficking, the attorney general said on Monday.

Mexico has reinforced guards at its roughly 19,000 oil installations since the explosions, which followed similar attacks in July claimed by the same group, known by its Spanish initials EPR.

But warding off another attack by the shadowy organization would draw army and intelligence personnel away from President Felipe Calderon's crackdown on drug gangs, which now has some 20,000 troops and police deployed in troublespots.

"We have no indication of an organic link with narcos," said Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora.

"What is certain is that these activities distract personnel assigned to the fight against organized crime, which is (our) chief priority, and in this sense they are doing a service for drug trafficking," he told foreign journalists.

The EPR bombed the state oil monopoly Pemex's pipeline network in six places last week, cutting off natural gas to thousands of factories, disrupting oil refining and costing the country hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Marxist group vowed to continue its actions until the government releases two activists it says were captured in May in the volatile city of Oaxaca, where it is based.

The government is adamant the pair are not in state custody and Medina Mora said the claim of their arrest was being used to justify an intensification of the EPR's guerrilla campaign, which had lain dormant for years.

"It's a group that we are taking very seriously and it's a severe worry for the government," he said, adding that authorities are treating the attacks as terrorism.

Financed by ransom money from kidnapping, the EPR has no known links to other radical groups, Medina Mora said.

He said it may have only one hundred or so active members, who use crude fire extinguisher bombs, but they pose a threat to pipelines, which are difficult to guard.

Mexico is a major oil supplier to the United States which relies on it as a politically stable source.