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Mexico City (AFP)

Mexico's president-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Thursday said he is asking the United Nations for help combatting corruption and human rights abuses.

Lopez Obrador successfully campaigned on a zero tolerance policy towards endemic corruption in Mexico, promising to save millions of dollars in public funds.

"The UN is going to help us, we're going to lean on them because they have" an anti-corruption office, said Lopez Obrador at a press conference.

The president-elect also asked for the UN's assistance in preventing "human rights violations... like the disappearance of the Ayotzinapa youth."

On the night of September 26, 2014, a group of 43 students from a rural teaching school in Ayotzinapa, southern Mexico, disappeared after they were arrested by police in the nearby city of Iguala.

They had been heading to the capital Mexico City to take part in commemorations for a 1968 massacre of students and civilians that left hundreds dead.

Prosecutors said the police handed over the students to drug traffickers who subsequently killed them, burned their bodies and spread their ashes in a river.

But that version of events was questioned by independent expert investigators from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, amid speculation that various other government forces were involved.

Lopez Obrador presented former health minister Juan Ramon de la Fuente as his choice for Mexico's ambassador to the UN, an appointment that still needs to be ratified by the Senate.

Lopez Obrador, known by his initials AMLO, is due to take over the reins from President Enrique Pena Nieto on December 1. He was elected president on July 1 with a resounding victory, securing more than 50 percent in the first round.

© 2018 AFP