MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's battle against violent drug cartels will suffer from the departure of the attorney general, fired by President Vicente Fox as a scapegoat in an unrelated political crisis, analysts said.

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Attorney General Rafael Macedo -- liked by Washington for his tough line on drugs -- was forced out last week by Fox to allow a popular leftist mayor to run for president in 2006 despite legal charges hanging over him.

His replacement by lawyer Daniel Cabeza de Vaca, sworn in on Monday, leaves Mexico's crackdown on drug gangs along the northern border with a little-known man in charge just as killings and violence escalate.

"The fact we have a new attorney general with no experience in law enforcement will certainly have an impact," said Jorge Chabat, security analyst at Mexico's CIDE think tank.

"Whenever you have a new team coming in you lose a certain amount of drive. Given the fight against drug trafficking has been going well and giving results, it's likely we'll see less spectacular results now than over the past four years."

Drug gangs regularly gun down rivals as they fight for control of smuggling routes for cocaine, marijuana and amphetamines to the United States.

While Macedo has jailed key drug bosses like Benjamin Arellano Felix and Osiel Cardenas, that has set off a desperate war on the border for market share left by the captured capos.

Some 400 people have been killed this year, many shot execution-style with their hands tied behind their backs, as upstart groups from the state of Sinaloa move in on territory controlled by the Gulf Cartel in northeast Mexico.

Macedo, an army general, deployed troops to reinforce police in border cities and help control jails where drug barons were running operations from their cells.

STABILITY OVER SECURITY

In his resignation speech, Macedo urged the authorities to continue the projects he had started. But some observers worry his successor may not have the same clout.

"(Cabeza de Vaca) wasn't appointed for his experience but because he is close to Fox. His background is in tax, not criminal law, and his appointment will bring absolutely nothing to the fight against drug trafficking," said Arturo Solis, director of the Center for Frontier Studies and Human Rights in the border town of Reynosa.

Fox sacrificed Macedo to restore political stability after Mexicans protested the pursuit of minor legal charges against Mexico City's leftist mayor, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. The firing eased a political crisis consuming the country.

Analysts say it suggests domestic politics has for now overtaken the war on drugs among Fox's priorities, despite repeated U.S. pleas to Mexico not to let drug-related border violence spiral out of control.

The U.S. government last week renewed a travel alert for northern Mexico, warning of a rise in murders and kidnappings, many of them related to the drugs trade.

U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza angered Mexico in January by criticizing "the inability of local law enforcement to come to grips with rising drug warfare."

Analysts said despite its overriding concern over drug trafficking, the United States had also been worried about the domestic political tensions that flared in April with the case against Lopez Obrador, seen by many as politically motivated.

"I think Washington will understand what Fox has done," said Chabat. "They probably feel Mexico's stability is more important than whether it catches a couple less drugs barons." (Additional reporting by Tim Gaynor in Monterrey and Alistair Bell in Mexico City)
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