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Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – President Obama took the unusual step Thursday of retracting a statement made a day earlier by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about Mexico’s drug war.

Clinton said Mexico’s drug war was like Colombia’s war against insurgents 20 years earlier, which was funded by money from drug cartels.

At their peak, insurgents controlled more than a third of Colombia and killed thousands of judges, police, journalists and informants.

Clinton’s comment drew sharp rebuttals from Mexican politicians, who described their effort against drug cartels as more of a police action than a war against military insurgents.

Obama called Mexico a “democracy” with a growing economy that cannot be compared with Colombia 20 years ago, according to the Los Angeles-based Spanish language newspaper La Opinion, which quoted Obama in an interview.

Obama’s retraction referred to Clinton’s comments at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.

Regarding Mexico, she said, “It’s looking more and more like Colombia looked 20 years ago, where the narco-traffickers controlled certain parts of the country.”

Clinton said U.S. drug consumers are fueling the violence in Mexico that has killed more than 28,000 people since the war on drug cartels started in December 2006.

The violence has included four car bombs in the past three months, the assassination of a candidate for a state governorship and a three-fold increase in kidnappings, according to a recent Mexican government report.

The State Department has warned its consulate staff to send their children away from Monterrey, a northern city that has been one of Mexico’s most prosperous.

“These drug cartels are showing more and more indices of insurgencies,” Clinton said.

She said Mexico and other Central American countries might need “a much more vigorous U.S. presence” to fight drug cartels.

Mexican politicians continued their denials Thursday of Clinton’s statements.

Alejandro Poire, spokesman for Mexican President Felipe Calderon, said that unlike Colombia, Mexico was acting “in time” to prevent drug cartels from seizing political power and was reforming government institutions, such as the police.

“There is a very important difference between what Colombia faced and what Mexico is facing now,” Poire said at a news conference. “Perhaps the most important similarity … is the extent to which organized crime and narcotics-trafficking organizations in both countries are fed by the enormous and gigantic U.S. demand for drugs.”

Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa said in a radio interview that Mexican drug cartels have no political agenda whereas in Colombia they were advocates of socialism.

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