Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday that the surging drug violence in Mexico now resembles that of war-torn Colombia a generation ago, with criminal cartels looking like "insurgencies" battling for control of territory, The Washington Post reports.

"It's looking more and more like Colombia looked 20 years ago, where the narco-traffickers controlled certain parts of the country," Clinton said at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.

Mexico quickly responded. In an afternoon news conference, Mexican President Felipe Calderon's national security adviser, Alejandro Poire said, "We do not share these findings, as there is a big difference between what Colombia faced and what Mexico is facing today."

Twenty years ago, Colombia was battling two revolutionary guerrilla movements, which at their peak controlled about a third of the country, as well as powerful drug lords such as Pablo Escobar and his Medillin cartel. Thousands of judges, journalists, politicians and business leaders, as well as police and soldiers, were killed in the Colombian conflict.

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