(Updates with quotes by Calderon, details) MEXICO CITY, Feb 8 (Reuters) - Mexico plans to extradite more drug lords to the United States as part of President Felipe Calderon's fight against cartels that killed 2,000 people last year, a top anti-drug official said on Thursday. Mexico extradited four suspected drug gang leaders in January as a total of 17 men were flown to the United States. One of them was Osiel Cardenas, who is accused of running the powerful Gulf Cartel. "The policy of President Felipe Calderon is about reducing impunity. ... The measures (extraditions) are the main tools the Mexican state has to uphold the law," Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, a senior official in Mexico's attorney general's office, told reporters. He declined to say who would be extradited or when, but signaled that the pace of the extraditions depended on when the appeals of those accused were exhausted in Mexico. He added that he expected more extraditions this year. Mexico extradited 63 drug traffickers to the United States in 2006 and 41 in 2005, the attorney general's office said. Drug kingpins held in Mexican prisons often run their cartels from behind bars, making extradition crucial. Since taking office on Dec. 1, Calderon has sent thousands of troops to combat the drug cartels that channel South American cocaine and marijuana into the United States, winning praise from the U.S. government and ordinary Mexicans. "We're going to persevere with this effort, in what is a difficult, arduous battle that will be tough for the Mexican people who can be sure we will triumph," Calderon said in a speech on Thursday. The government has increased protection for judges, prosecutors and officials involved in extraditions to prevent revenge attacks by cartel members. But officials say Mexico is unlikely to see the kind of backlash that forced the Colombian government to abandon extraditions in the 1990s because the Mexican army is prepared to respond.
