MEXICO: Fox seeks to abolish death penalty in Mexico

Mexican President Vicente Fox, a firm opponent of capital punishment, said on Tuesday he will ask congress to strip from the constitution a provision allowing military courts to impose the death penalty.

Fox said he was proposing the change at the initiative of the military, the only institution that hands down the death sentence.

"At the proposal of the defense minister we will soon send to congress an initiative to eliminate from our constitution the application of the death penalty in our country," Fox said at a presentation by the nation's human rights ombudsmen.

While Mexico vigorously opposes the death penalty on the world stage, its own military continues to apply it, although no one has been put to death in at least 4 decades.

Last November Fox spared 2 soldiers sentenced to death by military tribunals. Both had been convicted of killing superiors, a crime subject to punishment by death under the military penal code.

Mexico has gone to the World Court against the United States to appeal more than 50 death sentences against its citizens. Fox labels the death penalty "inhumane" and has received international recognition for his fight against it.

Rights activists have said the government should take capital punishment off the books to make Mexican law conform with its public position on the issue.

Laurie Freeman of the Washington Office on Latin America, a U.S.-based rights group, welcomed Fox's plan on Tuesday but said pervasive human rights concerns in the military persist.

Chief among them was the military's jurisdiction over criminal cases involving crimes by soldiers against civilians, she said. Rights leaders argue the military protects its own troops in military courts and such cases should be tried in civilian courts.

In one recent case the nation's human rights ombudsman found the military violated an Indian woman's rights by not properly investigating her rape accusation against soldiers. The military has rejected the National Human Rights Commission's recommendation that the investigation be reopened.

Military justice is a sensitive issue for Fox, whose drive to uncover and punish past atrocities by the army and other security forces has produced few results.