(Updates with Congress details) By Kieran Murray and Adriana Barrera MEXICO CITY, Nov 28 (Reuters) - Mexican President-elect Felipe Calderon named a hard-line conservative for interior minister on Tuesday and lawmakers brawled in Congress in a deepening political crisis days before Calderon takes power. Francisco Ramirez Acuna was picked to spearhead the new government's handling of unrest, with Mexico reeling from leftist street protests over Calderon's election, violence in the popular tourist city of Oaxaca and a spate of bombings in the capital. Ramirez Acuna, a close ally of the president-elect from the right wing of the ruling National Action Party, also will play a key role in trying to win support in Congress for tax, energy and labor reforms. Calderon faces open hostility from left-wing parties who claim he stole the July 2 presidential election and have vowed to prevent him from being sworn in on Friday. In the lower house of Congress, rival deputies upturned furniture, punched and shoved each other and vied for control of the main podium, where Calderon is due to be sworn in. The standoff carried on into the night, with lawmakers chanting insults, draping banners across seats and bringing sleeping bags and tents into the chamber. The leftists said they would not leave. Some analysts fear Calderon will be forced to hold Friday's ceremony at an alternative site. Calderon is expected to be a key U.S. ally in Latin America, where Washington's influence has been hit by a series of left-wing gains in recent years. Although Calderon has promised to work with opposition parties to ease months of tension, his appointment of Ramirez Acuna drew immediate fire. "He's a fascist. We are going to see more repression," said Gerardo Fernandez, spokesman for the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution. Ramirez Acuna, 54, was governor of the conservative western state of Jalisco, where he was often criticized for being too eager to use state police to crack down on protesters. Calderon said Ramirez Acuna has shown he is open to dialogue but also has "an irrevocable responsibility to uphold the law." The new interior minister is expected to take a hard line in Oaxaca. Six months of protests against the state's governor have brought chaos to the picturesque state capital. About 15 people have been killed, mostly shot by what protesters say are off-duty policemen. CONCILIATORY TONE Ramirez Acuna struck a conciliatory tone on Tuesday. He said he would seek to open talks with all political parties and tried to play down concerns he would be a hard-liner. "Not a heavy hand, but a firm hand to reach agreements," he said in a radio interview. Calderon's razor-thin presidential election victory split Mexico along class lines six years after President Vicente Fox ended 71 years of one-party rule. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the losing left-wing candidate, claimed massive fraud and paralyzed central Mexico City for six weeks with protest camps. Calderon, 44, had to announce the appointment of Ramirez Acuna and other cabinet members at a plush hotel to avoid protests by Lopez Obrador supporters outside his office. He also picked little-known diplomat Patricia Espinosa, who is Mexico's ambassador in Austria, as his foreign minister. She will lead efforts to persuade the U.S. Congress to pass immigration reforms benefiting millions of Mexicans living and working illegally in the United States. Outgoing President Fox had made those reforms his top foreign policy goal but the efforts failed. Instead, U.S. President George W. Bush last month approved hundreds of miles of new fencing on the border to help keep immigrants out.
