Hillary Clinton on the drugs war in Mexico Reuters

Hillary Clinton has sparked anger in Mexico by comparing its drug-related violence to an insurgency and hinting that US troops may need to intervene.

The US secretary of state said Mexico's level of car bombings, kidnappings and mayhem resembled Colombia a generation ago. She floated the prospect of US military advisers being sent to Mexico and central America.

"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. "These drug cartels are showing more and more indices of insurgencies."

Signalling growing concern at events south of the Rio Grande, with 28,000 dead in Mexico from drug-related violence in four years, Clinton said the Obama administration was considering a type of "Plan Colombia" for Mexico and central America where Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras are also plagued by drug-related violence.

The Colombia plan, introduced by Clinton's husband, Bill, bolstered Colombia's security forces with US military personnel, equipment and training. A decade and $7.3bn later Colombia's once-mighty guerrillas are reeling but drug trafficking continues almost unabated.

"There were problems and there were mistakes but it worked," said the secretary of state. The administration needed to figure out "the equivalents" of Plan Colombia for Mexico and Central America, she said.

Mexico's government rebutted the insurgency analogy. "We do not share these findings, as there is a big difference between what Colombia faced and what Mexico is facing today," said Alejandro Poire, a national security adviser to the country's president, Felipe Calderón.

Mexico had not, for instance, elected a drug lord such as Pablo Escobar to congress, and Mexico's aggressive military-led confrontation of drug cartels showed the country was acting "in time" to spare itself Colombia's fate, said Poire. One valid comparison was that "enormous, gigantic demand for drugs in the United States" continued to nourish narco-traffickers.

The Obama administration has admitted US drug consumption and lax gun laws contribute to Mexico's problems.

The idea that the US military could return to Mexico – a nationalistic country sore at losing 525,000 square miles to the US in 1848 – provoked indignation.

"Starting right now we have to say this clearly. We are not going to permit any version of a Plan Colombia," said Santiago Creel, a senator and member of Calderón's National Action party. "We cannot permit a Plan Colombia in Mexico."

Ricardo Monreal, a senator with the leftist Labor party, challenged Clinton's claim that Plan Colombia was a success. "Whoever thinks Colombia is a cure-all, and if the United States thinks it is necessary to apply the same model to us they applied to Colombia, they are mistaken."

Adam Isacscon, a Colombia expert at a thinktank called the Washington Office on Latin America, recently published a study titled Don't Call it a Model. It recognised successes but faulted US optimism about Plan Colombia. "Colombia's security gains are partial, possibly reversible and weighed down by 'collateral damage'. They have carried a great cost in lives and resources. Scandals show that the government carrying out these security policies has harmed human rights and democratic institutions. Progress against illegal drug supplies has been disappointing."

Despite trade and aid glitches, relations are good between Washington and Calderón, a conservative, pro-free trade technocrat. Both sides recently pledged deeper cooperation.

The diplomatic spat came amid the discovery of more corpses and the third killing of a mayor in a month. Four hooded gunmen burst into Alexander Lopez Garcia's office in El Naranjo in the the northern state of San Luis Potosi and shot him dead. Federal police found four bodies in a clandestine grave they linked to an arrested drug lord, Edgar Valdez Villarreal, nickanmed La Barbie.

Authorities have also announced finding the bodies of a prosecutor and police chief who had been investigating the massacre of 72 migrants last month.